Amer daoudi biography channel

On August 1, 2012, Prof. Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Founder and director of the American Studies Graduate Program and a professor of politics and international relations at al-Quds University in Jerusalem, he served as a Washington Institute visiting fellow this summer. His works include A Bibliography of Arabic Books on American Affairs (2009).The following is a rapporteur's summary of his remarks.

To better understand Arab perceptions of America, it is useful to examine the publications about the United States that are circulated in Arab countries. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Arabs are readers and they especially like the popular, mass-produced books and booklets found on street corners and kiosks throughout the Middle East. Assessing the content of these publications provides a glimpse into what Arabs are reading about America.

To that end, an effort was undertaken to compile and catalog every book written in the Arab world about the United States. Initially, this was motivated by a desire to find appropriate material to use in a graduate program of American studies at an Arab university. But the findings had an even more profound implication -- they provided a window into the biased, distorted perception of U.S. politics and foreign policy held by so many Arabs.

In total, just over 1,000 books were collected. This shockingly low number alone says a lot about the poverty of Arab knowledge about America. Of the total, about 25 percent covered U.S. foreign policy, reflecting three dominant themes:

• the United States as policeman of the world, directing global politics to benefit U.S. interests;
• the Israeli lobby as the major force behind U.S. decisionmaking;
• and the United States as waging a war against Islam.

Typically, the authors of these books have never traveled to or studied in the United States, but tha

Michael Best - Assistant Professor
Sam Nunn School of International Affairs &School of Interactive Computing

Nancy Brockway - Chief Emergency Services Officer
American Red Cross

Amer Daoudi - Director
World Food Programme’s (WFP) Logistics Division

William R. (Ray) Doyle - Senior Research Scientist
Information Technology and Telecommunications Laboratory of the Georgia Tech Research Institute

Bob Emrey - Senior Research Scientist
Chief of the Health Systems Division
USAID Bureau for Global Health

David Gazashvili - Deputy Director and the Senior Advisor, Emergency and Humanitarian Assistance Unit
CARE USA

Nathaniel Hupert - Associate Professor of Public Health and Medicine
Cornell University and Director of the Preparedness Modeling Initiative for the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Preparedness (CDC)

William Hyde - Director of Operations and Knowledge Management
International Medical Corps

Michael Marx - Senior Civil Military Coordination Advisor
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Leigh McCook - Division Chief, Socio-Technical Systems Division
GTRI

Becky McCorry - Manager, Disaster Operations Center
American Red Cross

Richard Owens - Vice President
John Snow Inc and The Partnership for Supply Chain Management

Rosemary Parnell - Director, Field Logistics
American Red Cross

Maria Rey - Executive Director
Center for Emerging Logistics and Supply Chains

Jim Shortal - Director
Business Continuity Engineering and Technical Operations Cox Communications

William "Eric" Smith - Assistant Administrator
FEMA Logistics Management Directorate

Dan Stowers - Planning Director
Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA)

Bert Thornton - President of Franchise Operations
Waffle House

Rolando Tomasini - Research Group Leader
INSEAD Social Innovation Center's Humanitarian Research Group

Santosh Vempala - Professor and Director of the Algorithms and Randomness Center
Georgia Tech

Prashant Yadav

And with acute malnutrition rates continuing to rise, urgent action is required to address this unfolding humanitarian crisis, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned. 

“If we don't reverse this crisis, if we don't get food to the people in the south of Madagascar, families will starve and lives will be lost”, Amer Daoudi, WFP's Senior Director of Operations, said, after visiting one of the worst affected areas, Sihanamaro. 

Evolving catastrophe 

Most districts in the South are in the throes of a nutrition emergency with Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) levels in children under five, nearly doubling over the last four months – touching an alarming 16.5 per cent – the Ministry of Health reported.  

Children with acute malnutrition are four times more likely to die than healthy youngsters. 

And in the worst affected district of Ambovombe, GAM has risen above 27 per cent, putting the lives of many children at risk.  

Meeting needs, saving lives 

Over the next six months, WFP needs $74 million to save lives in the world's second-largest island State.  

“We have witnessed heart-breaking scenes of severely malnourished children and starving families”, said Mr. Daoudi, appealing for “money and resources…to help the people of Madagascar”. 

After the alarm was raised across Amboasary district, the UN agency has been progressively assisting up to 750,000 people through food and cash distributions each month. 

State of peril 

Consecutive years of drought in the South have left at least 1.35 million people in need of emergency food and nutrition assistance, according to WFP.  

Since last September, the start of the lean season, the situation had turned critical as families had already depleted their food supplies and gone through vital seed stocks, leaving nothing for the November/December 2020 planting season.&nbs

Unprecedented levels of drought across many countries in Africa have left experts and humanitarian agencies fearing the worst.

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to push the continent to its limits, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned many countries may soon face famine as a result of drought.

Famine looms in Madagascar

Southern Madagascar is currently experiencing its worst hunger crisis in years, brought on by droughts and sandstorms that have turned many fields infertile. The situation is so dire that locusts — which are ordinarily considered a crop pest — have become a source of survival for many.

"We haven't harvested anything for almost two years," local farmer Najoro told DW. "We had to live on root tubers. After it rained the larvae of the locusts hatched. This has saved us. Without the locusts, we would all be dead by now."

The enormity of the crisis is such that children are now among the worst affected. A WFP relief mission based in the town of Tranomaro has also been dealing with an unprecedented rise in the number of children dying or needing medical attention as a direct result of malnutrition.

"One of my children died," one mother told DW. "We buried them on Friday. I came here [to the relief mission] with [my other child]."

With people's reliance on root tubers and locusts doing nothing to alleviate the situation, the WFP has been distributing food to the community.

"The situation is extremely bad. Famine is looming in southern Madagascar," Amer Daoudi, the Senior Director of Operations at WFP told DW. "People are seeing almost all food sources disappear. We have a massive nutritional emergency."

Similar story in Zimbabwe, Angola

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, years of successive drought has also left it vulnerable to food insecurity. At the beginning of 2021, the WFP predicted that at least 7.7 million people out of the country's 15 million strong populati