Foot-dragging in Darfur and Ricky Martin's new charity...

In remarks to a recent meeting of the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action, top humanitarian expert Larry Minear of Tufts University asked why it took so long for the international community to respond to crisis in Darfur. According to Minear, aid agencies said a lot of their staff in Darfur were in the field for the first time, and one study said aid workers today would rather talk to the U.N. Security Council than dig latrines.

Minear says aid agencies didn't seem to have taken on board the historical context of Sudan, and were surprised by problems that should have been obvious - siting camps too close to the border, the difficulty in counting refugees, the risks to women collecting firewood, and the challenge of keeping of staff morale.

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If Ricky Martin - the pop star behind "Livin' the Vida Loca" - had a charitable foundation, what do you think it would do? Well, not only is the Puerto Rican singer a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF, but the Ricky Martin Foundation is working with Microsoft on a campaign promoting child Internet safety, and is doing its best to raise awareness of child trafficking.

And where did I learn this? It wasn't Heat magazine. It wasn't even the Oprah Winfrey Show. It was in the latest issue of Forced Migration Review, which has human trafficking as its theme this issue.

Some other highlights of Forced Migration Review are:

The Office of the U.N. high Commissioner for Refugees is having a go at promoting the female condom, starting with refugee camps in Kenya.

A spotlight on "climate refugees". The term might not be technically correct, but Kate Romer says Australia should think about the fact that 50 million of the people expected to lose their homes because of environmental factors by 2010 will be in its backyard, when islands like Tuvalu, Kiribati, Fiji and Tonga become inhabitable.

A report on the Caucacus republic of Georgia, where Walter Kalin says 200,000 internally displaced people are still living in decaying, isolated collective centres without electricity or running water, more than a decade after fighting sent them fleeing. He gives details on Abkhazia and South Ossetia too.

That's it for now.

Ruth Gidley AlertNet journalist