Looking towards the Fall

The more I think about my grad program, the more unsure I get. I'm getting some hardcore cold-feet.

When people find out I'm going to grad school, they usually ask "OHHhhh, and what are you studying?!" I reply "It's the 'Complex Emergencies' stream of the International Studies MA at SFU."

Most times, they just say "Ahhhhh" and move on. Other times, I've also heard "WTF does that even mean, complex emergencies?" One one or two occasions, I've heard "Thats pretty specific!"

Wide range of responses, with good insights all round. It proves that while some are perplexed, few really care. Of those that do, it seems to strike them as being unclear and obscure, much in the same way as I think about toxipharamcology. To be perfectly honest, I'm still trying to figure out what it means, and if it is TOO specific. So I decided to email the Dean of Graduate Studies in my department. This should be interesting...

Hi Professor Xxxxx,

I am planning on attending SFU in the fall for the MA-IS program. I sent Xxxx some questions about the program and she subsequently referred me to you. I have a big question that is both difficult and challenging to answer concisely, so any pertinent readings would be helpful and greatly appreciated. I'm going to pose the question up front because it lies at the heart of my qualms and it is therefore important to keep in mind. From a practical standpoint, I am more interested in the answer to the second question?

According to the School for International Studies, what constitutes a complex emergency?

After reading many different perspectives on the matter, I became concerned with how the department evaluates whether-or-not potential cases qualify as a complex emergency. Two more questions stem from this first broad question and my concerns therewith. What is the lowest acceptable scale for a case to be considered a humanitarian disaster? What makes one humanitarian disaster more of an emergency than another considering that some of the worst situations have been building over decades? To try and frame my concerns in a more concrete way, consider a painfully limited comparison between Colombia vs Mexico:

Colombia has suffered 50 years of internal conflict. As a result, 3,5 to 5 million live as IDPs, with hundreds of thousands of dead, and tens of thousands disappeared. A harrowing conflict, still unresolved in many ways. It is easy to see why Colombia qualifies uncontroversially as a complex emergency.

In Mexico, around 40,000 people have been killed in harsh and brutal violence since 2006. As a result of this violence [in addition to the 1994 Chiapas Conflict], 120,000 people live as IDPs and about 6400 with refugee status [noting that Mexico's population is twice that of Colombia's]. Depending how the illegal migration issues are interpreted, the total number of people displaced could be much higher. Furthermore, it is unclear if Mexico can resolve its internal security issues without more hands-on involvement from the international community, and many international organizations are currently at work dealing with issues of development, poverty, displacement and abuses of human rights.

So, to refocus the question:

According to the School for International Studies, could parts of Mexico's troubles be considered complex emergencies? If Mexico does not meet the criteria at the moment, then when would it qualify?

That is my main question, the answer to which is quite important to me. I've taken the liberty to continue on writing about why that is. I've been working with a human rights organization in El Estor, Guatemala. The two community leaders that I work with were deeply impacted by an assassination in Parana. Although this was the death of one person, in a community that most people will never hear of [or care to know about] the circumstances of this one death are just as informative as hearing about hundred. Many conventional complex emergencies, like in Colombia, are made up of countless other stories just like her's. So how many deaths does it take to create an emergency? I'm no fan of Stalin, but he summed it up well.

Although I digress, my concerns remain. A place like Central America may not be plagued by full blown humanitarian crises, but to pass them by would be a crisis in humanitarianism (quip-credit). If there is NO room for this level of analysis in the discourse of the MA-IS: Complex Emergencies program, I might need to think long and hard about pursuing this masters come September.

P.S. To maximize both our efforts, perhaps a conversation would be best. I’m back in Canada on the 23^rd of June. Perhaps we could discuss the answers at a later date on the phone or via Skype.

Thank you for taking the time and best regards,

Mark Romeril

If you read all that...I'm impressed. The worst part is, I cut a two other paragraphs out...I started rambling. So I decided to make my point about Stalins quote, and then move on. I'm sorry the links don't work, but I couldn't be bothered to reconnect them all. Because you've made it, I'm going to share some more pics

This is the view from my office.

This is my office.

This is the full moon last night. Simply beautiful.