Monthly Archives: January 2019

Snow and freezing temperatures endanger flooded refugee camps in Lebanon

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Snowstorm “Norma” is battering North Eastern Lebanon with heavy snow, rain and strong winds affecting nearly 250,000 refugees.

Hundreds of refugee camps and settlements in the area from the Akkar Plain to Bekaa Valley have been devastated by the storm. The camps house thousands of Syrian refugees in little more than tents and improvised wooden structures, a number of which have collapsed. UNHCR reported 70% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon live below the poverty line and 41% have precarious and unsafe housing. Some camps have been flooded with as much as half a meter of water, and.

Flooding and heavy rains in Northern Syria, which started on December 26, have also devastated IDP camps across the region. Thousands of tents and the personal possessions of these IDPs were washed away, including medical supplies, wheel chairs and equipment. The people in these camps have lost what little they had left with no way of replacing them.

“Climate change has unleashed hellish conditions on the Syrian refugees in Lebanon. These families are living in tents, with all their clothes and possessions soaked and temperatures below freezing. Children, elderly, the infirm and vulnerable will not survive much longer without being moved to warm and dry locations. This is a humanitarian nightmare and will require an enormous coordinated effort to reach all of these camps in time.” Said Dr. Hussam Al Fakir, Chairman of UOSSM International UOSSM calls on all the international community and NGOs to deploy rapid response teams immediately and upgrade the refugee’s housing to shelters/locations that can adequately handle these harsh conditions.

[Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations]

Read about the work of Family Care Lebanon who help provide for refugees.

Life expectancy higher worldwide

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Worldwide life expectancy in 2016 was 72 years, up from 66.5 years in 2000.

The gain of 5.5 years in worldwide life expectancy between 2000 and 2016 was the fastest gain since the 1960s and reversed the declines of the 1990s caused by AIDS in Africa and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Child mortality rates for children under five years of age have fallen from 216 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1950; to 39.1 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2017.

[NPR]

International humanitarian aid takes the form of more cash rather than goods

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In 2016, cash transfers and vouchers made up about 10 percent of international humanitarian aid, or $2.8 billion, up from 2.5 percent a year earlier.

Donors and big aid agencies have committed to supplying more aid in the form of cash. International NGO World Vision, for example, expects to provide fully half of its spending in the form of cash by 2020.

Cash aid offers an elegant solution for buying goods and renting accommodation, and injects funds into local economies.

As unconditional cash aid grows in scale, UN agencies and NGOs are having to redefine their raison d’être. Cash threatens the traditional “business model” of many aid groups: a highly specialist aid agency (focusing on supplying just food or shelter, for example) makes little sense if families make their own purchasing decisions.

Financial service providers are taking over a significant role – and a percentage of the value transferred. In Turkey, for example, the European Commission provides cash transfers for 1.3 million Syrian refugees, in collaboration with the Turkish government, state-owned Halkbank, the Red Crescent, and the UN. The two-year contract is worth €650 million.

Why not cash should be the first question asked before starting any aid project, a key 2015 study published by UK think tank the Overseas Development Institute urged. Yet institutional and technical hurdles linger, some based on misperceptions. Cash aid doesn’t succumb to more fraud than bags or boxes of goods. Fears that recipients will spend the cash unwisely – on tobacco and alcohol, say – have also proven unfounded.

[IRIN]

UK removing Isis explosives and helping Iraqis return home

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More than a million Iraqis whose lives have been devastated by Daesh (aka Isis) safely returned home in 2018, made possible in part thanks to a huge UK aid funded mine clearance mission.

The Department for International Development (DFID) has today announced further support to clear explosives  (Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs) from schools, hospitals and roads in Iraq, eradicating one of the lasting impacts of Daesh’s reign of terror across the country. With the support of UK aid, approximately 16,500 explosives, 800 suicide belts and a staggering 2,000 deadly explosives traps were cleared in Iraq last year.

This new funding will support projects across the country’s Sinjar Province, an area with a historically large population of Yezidis who have been displaced by Daesh in their thousands, and one of the areas worst impacted by Daesh occupation. UK aid will support six explosive clearance teams who will be deployed across the region making schools, hospitals and critical infrastructure safe from suspected explosive.

The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has called the use of explosive traps a Daesh strategy to ‘win on the cheap’, continuing to devastate Iraq even as the Iraqi people try to rebuild.

With hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq still in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, the UK has supported more than 400,000 people with food and provided life-saving healthcare services to over four million people since 2014.

[Department for International Development]

Massive storm bringing torrential rain and waves up to 16 feet high is pounding Thailand

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A tropical storm bringing torrential rain, high winds, and waves up to 16 feet high has slammed into Thailand in what could be the nation’s worst storm in more than 30 years. The national meteorological service warned of “severe conditions” still to come.

The storm made landfall over the Pak Phanang district on the country’s east coast, according to the Thai Meteorological Department. The department warned that “torrential downpours” would strike the mainland.

Forecasters expect the storm to slow as it moves over land, at which point it would be classified as a depression rather than a tropical storm. It could still cause significant damage in this weakened state.

Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said thousands of residents in coastal areas had been evacuated.

Thousands of tourists are trapped on some of the country’s most popular islands, including Koh Samui, Koh Phangan, and Koh Tao, CNN reported.

The US and Israel have quit UNESCO

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The United States and Israel officially quit the U.N.’s educational, scientific and cultural agency, the culmination of a process triggered more than a year ago amid concerns that the organization fosters anti-Israel bias.

The withdrawal is mainly procedural yet serves a new blow to UNESCO, co-founded by the U.S. after World War II to foster peace. The Paris-based organization has been denounced by its critics as a crucible for anti-Israel bias: blasted for criticizing Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, naming ancient Jewish sites as Palestinian heritage sites and granting full membership to Palestine in 2011.

The withdrawals will not greatly impact UNESCO financially, since it has been dealing with a funding slash ever since 2011 when both Israel and the U.S. stopped paying dues after Palestine was voted in as a member state. Since then officials estimate that the U.S. — which accounted for around 22 percent of the total budget — has accrued $600 million in unpaid dues, which was one of the reasons for President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw. Israel owes an estimated $10 million.

UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay took up her post just after Trump announced the pullout. Azoulay, who has Jewish and Moroccan heritage, has presided over the launch of a Holocaust education website and the U.N.’s first educational guidelines on fighting anti-Semitism — initiatives that might be seen as responding to U.S. and Israeli concerns.

[TIME]