As I was doing some research recently, I bumped into a very interesting video on the International Monetary Fund’s Facebook page. This video was a short skit, by a gentleman who was acting as a migrant sending money back to support his brother in his home country.
This video was basically highlighting the impact of the huge remittances that migrant workers from lower and middle-income countries and the big role the money they send plays in those countries. In 2022 alone, IMF states that migrant workers sent $647 billion back home, money that helps in investment, entrepreneurship and savings.
This short skit that breaks down to the layman tough economic statistics, among other interesting clips on IMF’s page, shows how the media, both digital and traditional, among other related institutions, serve as a powerful tool towards driving the different agenda in creating visibility of reports on human development and other related reports.
There is a lot of consistency and similarity in length and detail in policy reports of matters human development. I am talking about World Happiness Report, Least Developed Countries Report, World Bank Report, World Trade Report, among many others.
The documents all point towards some sort of commitment by a group, organisation, foundation or intergovernmental agency, and they come after some kind of declaration from a meeting or conference of global scale.
These ideas are built on mutual understanding among different stakeholders and concerned parties, all informing us of some kind of risk or crises, and must be broken down in an easy to understand manner, not just for policymakers and those in academia, but for the ordinary people.
According to the Organisation for Economic and Cooperative Development’s report on Humanitarian Development Coherence, most reports show that humanitarian issues continue to grow as the number of people affected by issues, such as natural disasters, hunger, crime and poverty, among other issues, in humanitarian development continue to increase.
Shortened, well explained, using the right and current medium, then people world over will understand, for instance, the impact of climate change, hunger and poverty, among others.
Let there be skits, by relevant influencers, to have people understand these technical explanations that would otherwise be tough to understand. This may prompt faster action by ordinary citizens and those called to serve from top echelons of power to the grassroots level.
One thing about these reports is that they are very important for decisions to be made worldwide, for priority to be taken into consideration by the funding organisations or different governments.
However, these groups need to have ways of accessing contents of reports in easy ways, through shortened written versions or shortened video clips in the languages that they understand .
Donors and governments definitely have to make quick, but well informed decisions on what should be funded and what should not.
Most of these reports also show quantifiable results and impact of helping to mitigate the issues around the world. These efforts aim to reduce humankind's vulnerabilities and risks and ultimately making people in need more resilient. From these quantifiable results there is significant evidence that the organisations behind these reports have monitoring and evaluation tools.
Just like many in other fields have done in the past, summarising all these quantifiable results through making, for instance, an IMF like skit, or regional short Netflix documentaries, in my view, would be better for audiences to consume than wonderful but long reports, whose website you have to have known before hand.
The media serves as an instrument to inform, educate and communicate and, ultimately, raise awareness, impart knowledge, change attitude and change the behaviour of different populations based on the call to action that these reports have.
Communications researcher and scholar, currently pursuing Peace and Development Work Studies in Sweden