The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced yesterday the launch of a collaboration with Google to allow users of Google Earth - the most popular satellite mapping software - to make the virtual tour major humanitarian crises in the world (read the press release here).
while comfortably seated in front of our PC, we can travel Google Earth to reach the field offices of UNHCR in Chad, Colombia, Iraq and Darfur and to update us on the activities undertaken in the protection and humanitarian assistance to refugees and displaced persons in these contexts of crisis.
layers that UNHCR has set up Google Earth to allow three different levels of detail. Through the first is possible to deepen the activities of UNHCR, show the impact of displacement on neighboring countries and locate refugee camps. The second allows visitors to view photographs, videos and information on the lives of refugees, analyzing the operations of UNHCR in the areas education, water and sanitation, health, shelter. The third level is the visit within a refugee camp: schools, water points and the infrastructure in place.
We are obviously very distant from any use of this instrument for purposes which are not only awareness and fundraising, but congratulations to UNHCR for the effort of communication and visibility that has started (using software, however, that since 2005 attracted about 350 million visitors). In 2008, the agency plans to further expand this service by adding references to other crisis that is actively engaged.
must be said that UNHCR was not the first to use the tools made available by new technologies to raise public awareness on emergency and humanitarian assistance programs. In June, Amnesty International launched Eyes on Darfur on the internet to show the scale and effects of violence through high-resolution satellite images. Even the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington said the crisis in Darfur by developing a layer for Google Earth with information from the State Department, OCHA, UNHCR and Amnesty. Surfing the net, you can find other interesting examples: in particular, point out a successful layer on the forced migration from Somalia (with their add-on similar to the World Wind), a layer on the crisis in Central African Republic produced by a coalition of NGOs with the University of Bangui, and especially products that the American Society for the Advancement of Science has created Google Earth to document the crisis in Myanmar, Chad and Sudan, Lebanon and Zimbabwe.
by http://www.umanitari.it/?p=21