Mobile Phone Use in Disaster, Conflict and Displacement

Introduction

Coupled with the increasing usage of mobile devices worldwide, about 95% of the global population is now covered by mobile signals (GSMA, 2020a), while smartphone ownership rose to over 600 m and 820 m in sub-Saharan Africa and India, respectively, in 2020 (GSMA, 2020a, GSMA, 2020b). This increased availability of mobile phone saturation cuts across societal segments, opening up new ways of gathering big data, accessing environmentally relevant information, and fostering positive societal interventions, all of which are important in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)

Mobile technologies have rich potential in ensuring more equitable resilience by mobilising marginalised actors who might otherwise have been bypassed by more traditional knowledge generation practices. These include people with disabilities, who are four times more likely to die when a disaster strikes; or women, who are more vulnerable in disaster situations

Much attention has been paid to the tangible and highly visible role of mobile phones in emergency response: increasingly seen as a means to chronicle events being witnessed and/or experienced personally, they are also commonly used to disseminate information and educate and inform the public and emergency services (Gething and Tatem, 2011). By harnessing the viral capacity of such technologies, emergency response teams are able to alert and locate those in danger more swiftly than via traditional broadcast media or telecommunications methods

Some studies predict that smartphone subscriptions will almost double from 3.4 billion to 6.3 billion by 2021, meaning that most adults on earth will have access to some form of connected mobile device (Thomas 2016). New research, led by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), also suggests messaging apps could play a crucial role in humanitarian work in the future (Stoll 2017). From this, communities affected by harsh living conditions, war, and natural disasters can rely on these platforms to keep in touch with each other, have access to up-to-date information and connect with humanitarian facilities and volunteers to report on a difficult or life-threatening condition that requires emergency humanitarian assistance.

Refugees

An important aspect of migration is border control. “The national borders of rich countries are increasingly becoming militarized” (Eriksen 2007: 95), and the refugees are subject to “a curious mix of humanitarianism and military action emanating from Europe in the Mediterranean” (Eriksen 2016: 76). These developments represent challenges to people in flight, and in the past 10–15 years, they have increasingly used modern electronic devices such as smartphones to meet these challenges.

Modern communication may be of some emotional comfort for people in distress: it is good to ascertain that your folks at home worry less if you keep them informed of your current situation. Moreover, the cell phone represents a logistic device to facilitate a stressful and dangerous journey. Thus, it plays a crucial role in today’s ecology of communication (Altheide 2013); it provides organisation (of travel, togetherness), accessibility of information (when connection and charging devices are available) and contributes to structuring of sorts, of the whole flight.

Cell phones, and particularly the smartphone versions, may be viewed as part of an “interplay among social activities, social change, and social organization and activities” or the “structure, organization, and accessibility of information technology, various forums, media, and channels of information Cell phones, as a means of communication in situations of flight, have proven to guide refugees’ everyday and non-routine extraordinary activities (e.g. finding the way, escaping danger and securing financial supplies); in short, they prove to be an indispensable travel companion. f course, most refugees in Europe use their cell phones in different ways for “staying in touch with friends and family, but they are even more essential for refugees en route” (Gillespie et al. 2016: 11). This is a two-way process: those who are in flight are constantly worrying about those who are left behind, especially those who live with war; and those who have not left worry about their relatives’ perilous border crossings.

Hurdles

Usage of messaging apps, social networks, media platforms, and mobile money by people that are affected by humanitarian crises, critical situations, disasters, and accidents is being actively introduced (Lunt 2017; Kaspersen and Lindsey-Curtet 2016; Bouffet 2017). However, while the digital technologies provide new opportunities for communication in complex situations, the humanitarian and volunteer organizations do not have appropriate standards or internationally agreed and approved ethical norms for their deployment that in combination with people’s living conditions, specific culture of developing countries, social and material inequalities, and women’s rights problems can cause serious obstacles in facilitating humanitarian support.

Different Apps

s the digital state-of-the-art solutions, the mentioned platforms together with messaging apps contribute to response coordination and communication between affected communities, volunteers, and aid workers to provide the integrated digital environment for transparent and timely humanitarian assistance. For instance, 4W (Who, What, Where, and When) maps were developed to provide information for the planning of humanitarian assistance, covering the critical questions, such as who is doing what, where, and when. Tracking of humanitarian responders, automated updating of their location and responsibilities were piloted for Nepal, Vanuatu, and the Philippines (Comes and de Walle 2016). Further, KoBoToolbox, developed by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, is a free suite of tools for humanitarian data collection to be used in challenging environments (KoBoToolbox 2009). TraceRx platform is positioned as a well-known humanitarian supply chain solution. In large-scale emergencies, such as the earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 and the hurricane in Haiti in October 2016, Humanitarian ID was used to perform the humanitarian contact lists management (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2015; Stewart 2015).

messaging apps actualize problems related to data protection, privacy, and security since the information environment is often contested, and misinformation, propaganda, and rumors travel swiftly (Roby 2017), particularly, in the case of armed conflicts and disasters. For humanitarians, the risks of mobile app usage are associated with submitting or providing the permission to access the personal information, such as name, location, contacts, email address, and photos. The negative side is that this allows the provider of messaging app to collect a significant information on the user, including his daily routine, personal preferences, and list of trustees.

spectrum of different technologies that could usefully be exploited for DRR (Fig. 1). In areas of poor Internet provision and/or depressed smartphone ownership, voice calls and SMS messaging are used to target broad swathes of the population; for instance, Monsoon flood alerts for certain rivers in Nepal and India, sent by each respective country’s governmental water bureaucracy (Pandeya et al., 2020). For Internet-connected smartphones, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as messaging services like WhatsApp, while commonly associated with emergency response, also offer an important channel for official hazard warning communications, and may also augment social capital (Kaigo, 2012, Agahari et al., 2018). Similarly, Geographic Information System (GIS)-based technologies represent another (spatial) means of risk communication. Google Maps, for instance, has been used to develop a user-led disaster management system in Bangladesh (Sonwane, 2014). OpenStreetMap (OSM), an open-source and collaborative GIS platform, has also been used to develop similar systems (Rahman et al., 2012), or to allow affected communities to generate local landslide hazard, risk, and vulnerability maps dynamically (Parajuli et al., 2020). However, the most commonly utilised mobile technology in DRR are apps: they provide a user-friendly means of feeding raw data into hazard early-warning systems (EWS), the output from which can then be disseminated in visually appealing form back to users (Paul et al., 2018). They are generally highly context (i.e. country, natural hazard)-specific: two examples are MAppERS (Mobile Applications for Emergency Response and Support), which aims to reduce flood risk in Denmark by allowing users to share geospatial data such as geotagged images of flood extent with basin authorities (Frigerio et al., 2018); and MyShake, a global seismic platform that exploits users’ smartphones to detect earthquakes and record the magnitude of ground

Drones

The advanced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), also known as a drone, is an item whose flight is controlled either autonomously by artificial intelligence, computers, or a pilot on the ground. The promising directions of drone application in humanitarian crises are the following: mapping, delivering essential items to hard-to-access locations, monitoring environmental changes, supporting damage assessments, etc. (Fondation Suisse de Déminage 2016). Humanitarian organizations have started to use UAVs, including in Haiti and the Philippines to provide real-time information and situation monitoring, public information, search and rescue, etc. (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2014). In this way, different types of drones ensure accurate and up-to-date data on demand, helping representatives of humanitarian missions to make more informed decisions. However, some issues, such as data protection, should be addressed during application of drones.

Gender Gap

1.7 billion women now own a mobile phone in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and over a billion use the mobile internet. However, a significant gender gap in mobile phone ownership and usage exposes women to the risk of being left behind in an increasingly digitized world. In this context, females in LMICs are 10% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man. The variations within specific regions and countries are significant (Downer 2019). Furthermore, women in South Asia are 26% less likely to own a mobile than men and 70% less likely to use mobile internet (Rowntree 2018). In India, 67% of men own personal mobile phones, but only 33% percent of women do (Vota 2019). The reasons for this situation are as old as time and associated with such obvious barriers such as the availability of new technologies, cultural, religious and social background, and attitude to women’s rights.

The exclusion of women refugees and internally displaced women from the digital world and societies would negatively affect the possibilities to be rescued from dangerous situations and to express the rights to life, liberty, and security of a person, as it is stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

The existence of such trends requires the immediate identification of cause-and-effect relationships and concerted action to remove obstacles to women’s equal access to mobile services in the context of countries, where the gender gap is greatest. Mobile operators, software developers, humanitarian facilities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can work together to promote policies and initiatives aimed to reduce the cost of phones or enhance work on mitigation of the impact of cultural traditions and social norms on their use, such as awareness sessions, informative talks, and seminars.

The role of women humanitarians should be emphasized as they are also vulnerable to the dangers and perform the precious work in the conditions of armed conflicts, nature disasters, hunger, and humanitarian catastrophe, risking their health and lives. Subject of women humanitarians’ vulnerability has been brought to light in discussions of #AidToo movement, inspired by #MeToo and opposed to the sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse. Widespread reports of sexual misconduct in humanitarian contexts threaten women humanitarians’ own safety and security (O’Donnell 2019) and confirm the violations of inviolable human rights.

In the current context, there is a need to actively address the issues of gender equality in humanitarian action and protection of women from sexual harassment and abuse in order to ensure respect for women rights and dignity, since, according to Article 2 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”. Furthermore, the specific limitations should not affect the access of women humanitarians to the digital solutions developed to enhance the effectiveness of their work under the changing environment.

One of the most important links that connects those who need humanitarian assistance with those who are interested in responding is digital media and communications, integrating mobile mass communication with the Internet. According to Lobb and Mock (2007), during humanitarian response efforts, the mass media serves as the primary informational intermediary, informing donors, and policy-makers as well as the non-affected public.