“Today is a unique moment in history, because we are facing perhaps more threats – certainly to democracy than [at] any time since World War II – but also existential crises with climate change, with exacerbation of forced displacement. Today, 120 million people have fled their homes, and some people estimate that perhaps a billion will have been forced from home because of climate change by 2050,” said Sasha Chanoff, Aurora Board Committee Member, Aurora Prize Expert Panel Member, and Founder and CEO of RefugePoint, kicking off ‘The Role of Philanthropy in Humanitarian and Human Rights Interventions’ panel he moderated on May 9, 2024, at the Human Rights and Humanitarian Forum in Los Angeles, California.
Speakers of the event included Negar Tayyar, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Global Whole Being Fund; Amy Rao, Co-Chair of Human Rights Watch Board and Executive Vice President of The Schmidt Family Foundation; and Karen Ansara, Board Chair of NEID Global.
Amy Rao, Co-Chair of Human Rights Watch Board and Executive Vice President of The Schmidt Family Foundation, explained how the Foundation she represents had gradually expanded its programs to include human rights as they realized that everything they were doing ultimately connected to this crucial issue. “I get up every day and I think about how I can bring more people into funding the human rights fight internationally, since it’s something you have to get people to put a lot of their mind into, because you have to understand countries you might not be able to find on the map, and cultures you are not aware of, and histories, and it’s very complex. When you decide to fund human rights, you sort of decide you’re going to get a PhD in it,” said Ms. Rao.
There are many misconceptions regarding humanitarian work, noted Negar Tayyar, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Global Whole Being Fund, who pointed out that, despite personal experience, she, too, had been initially apprehensive about allocating needs to humanitarian assistance, which she had seen as a low-impact, short-term solution. “At the beginning of the work with the Fund, I was very reluctant to advise my Board to fund humanitarian work, because I thought humanitarian work is just, you know, blankets, water, which is important – my family relied on it, I wouldn’t be here without that support. <...> We [eventually] understood that, in order to tackle a systemic change, we do also need to look into humanitarian aid, and humanitarian aid is more than just services such as blankets, and water, and tents,” explained Ms. Tayyar.
Karen Ansara, Board Chair of NEID Global, talked about the importance of not simply finding funding, but receiving it at a crucial stage. “There is way too little funding at an early stage, when the early warnings have been sounded, and the world is not paying attention. For instance, in Somalia in 2011, there were early warnings about a severe life-threatening drought, but not enough funding came for what is called anticipatory actions that can be taken to avert a full-blown crisis, and the world said, ‘We’re never going to let that happen again.’ Well, in 2022, we did it again,” said Ms. Ansara.