Category: Humanitarian Aid

A joint humanitarian and longer-term response to refugee crisis

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The ongoing refugee crisis is unprecedented in scale and affecting people and places far from the scene of civil war and conflict. For years, most of the response to this crisis was entirely shouldered by a handful of countries and by humanitarian workers who risked their lives every day to confront an emergency that shows no sign of abating, and could last a generation or more.

And with the number of people fleeing their homes growing, it underscores the great need to find new solutions to help refugees and people in countries torn apart by conflict. For far too long, humanitarian and development groups have not worked together, but the situation today demands that we do so — immediately.

In particular, development organizations such as the World Bank Group can bring much greater levels of financing as well as experts who know how to put children in school and create jobs for refugees as well as people living in the host countries. Working with humanitarian actors and with countries hosting refugees, [World Bank is] developing financing with long-term, extremely low-interest loans that can support development projects at the appropriate scale.

The World Bank Group and six other multilateral development banks have agreed to collaborate more closely on creating jobs, increasing financing, analyzing the root causes of fragility and violence, and helping the Middle East and North Africa region recover once conflict ends.

Last year, the Bank Group developed a financing facility for the Middle East and North Africa, the goal in the next five years is to raise $1 billion in funding and turn that into $3 to $4 billion in long-term, very low-interest financing. Recently, the European Union joined eight nations pledging more than $1 billion in grants, loans, and guarantees to this fund supporting Syrian refugees and host communities in Jordan and Lebanon, as well as recovery and reconstruction across the region.

[The plan is] to provide resources to low- and middle-income countries hosting refugees across the world, to be launched in September at the UN General Assembly.

[Huffington Post]

First truck of humanitarian aid from Turkey reaches Gaza

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The first truck carrying humanitarian aid from Turkey has entered Gaza through Rafah border crossing on Monday.

The aid consisted of flour, rice, sugar, food packages and toys. The Turkish Red Crescent are putting efforts to swiftly transfer the aid and distribute to Gazans.

After a six-year hiatus, Turkey and Israel reached an initial reconciliation agreement last Monday.

Diplomatic relations between the two countries were suspended after Israeli troops stormed a Gaza-bound aid ship called Mavi Marmara in international waters in 2010, killing 10 Turkish activists. The Mavi Marmara aid ship was among six civilian vessels trying to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza when Israeli commandos boarded it.

In 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced regret for the attack.

Under the new deal, in addition to agreeing to Turkey’s humanitarian presence in Gaza, Israel will pay $20 million in compensation to the families of the Mavi Marmara victims.

[Daily Sabah]

Turkish humanitarian aid heads to Gaza via Israeli port

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Turkey sent thousands of tons of humanitarian aid, including rice, flour and toys, to Gaza on Saturday, days after reaching a deal to normalize relations with Israel.

A Turkish cargo ship docked in the southern Israeli port city of Ashdod on Sunday afternoon in accordance with the recent reconciliation agreement signed between Israel and Turkey.

The rapprochement and consequent aid to Gaza came as unemployment in the Palestinian strip has reached 43 percent, electricity is available for only eight to 12 hours a day, and water resources are drying up. Unless radical steps are taken, “it is not a question of if but rather when another escalation [eruption of violence] will take place,” warned Nickolay Mladenov, U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.

Turkey also intends to build a power plant, a desalination facility, a hospital and houses there. Israel is going along with these plans. It no longer seeks to topple Hamas, realizing that the alternatives to it are Islamic radicals or chaos.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been extremely sensitive to the situation in Gaza, which since 2007 has been governed by Hamas, a Muslim party like his own party, AKP.  He was furious when Israel raided Gaza and when it forcibly foiled a 2010 attempt to break a maritime blockade of Gaza.

In that incident, Israeli marines stormed the Mavi Marmara aid ship, one of six civilian vessels trying to break the blockade, and killed 10 Turkish activists on board. Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and froze military cooperation after a 2011 U.N. report into the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara largely exonerated the Jewish state.

But there was a breakthrough this past Sunday after months of talks between the two countries. And by Monday, Turkey announced that a deal would be signed normalizing relations with Israel.

[VoA/Haaretz]

Privately sponsoring a Syrian refugee family in Canada – Part 1

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Aliye El Huseyin, a Syrian refugee, arrived by plane in Toronto on Feb. 29, with her husband, Omer Suleyman, and their three children, after a 14-hour flight from Ankara and an equally long drive from Mardin, the city in southeast Turkey where they had lived since fleeing the catastrophe of Aleppo.

They were carrying everything they owned in five 20-kilogram bags: 1,500 Syrian lira (under $10, all the money they had); three Syrian coffee pots, three kilos of Syrian coffee; four kilos of Syrian tea; a Tupperware container of her favorite seasonings; a bar of Aleppo’s famous olive-oil soap; her Koran; 20-odd hijab headscarves, … a cracked cellphone containing the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of everyone she knew; and, tucked carefully away, the keys and deed to her apartment in Aleppo.

Now living in the greater Toronto area of Scarborough, Aliye, and Omer have cooked 25 dishes for their guests, to break the day’s fast on the first night of Ramadan. Aliye is a gifted cook, and Omer made his living for a while as a chef in Turkey.

They’ve invited the core of their sponsor group, the private citizens who stepped up last fall as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees, helping to make Canada the second-most-generous country in the world last year in terms of all resettled refugees.

Whatever else an outsider might call the band of Torontonians who sponsored Aliye and Omer Suleyman as refugees – privileged bleeding hearts and citizens who don’t know how else to address an unsolvable world are two options that come to mind – the sincerity of their commitment is undeniable.  Read more

Privately sponsoring a Syrian refugee family in Canada – Part 2

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The Rosedale United Church had taught the [private sponsor] group how best to resettle refugees. There are three ways this can happen, one of which is as Privately Sponsored Refugees (PSRs: Canada is the only country whose immigration laws mandate its citizens’ right to do this). Of the promised 25,000 Syrian refugees who arrived by the end of February, a third were purely private sponsorships. (Many thousands more are currently coming through the system.)

Raising private money for the Syrians turned out to be as easy as melting butter in a pan. The sponsoring group had $40,000 in hand in a scant six weeks. Other groups moved just as quickly. A posse led by a broadcaster bagged $130,000 with a single group e-mail she sent to 50 people.

This sponsor group split into a slew of subcommittees: liaison, logistics, housing, finance, education, resources, employment. While Mary McConville scoured potential apartments in four neighborhoods, Lawrence and his team searched for schools. Meanwhile, Jane Gotlib solicited furniture and clothes from volunteers. So much stuff was proffered, she created a registry to track what the Suleymans still needed. The sponsors stocked the refrigerator, too, from a Middle Eastern supermarket.

The six core members met every two weeks, with two-page written agendas and e-mailed follow-ups. Medical checkups and immunizations? Arranged and chauffeured. ESL lessons? Booked. After three years of war stress and no dental care, the Suleymans, like many Syrians, were experiencing a crisis of their own: The group instantly raised another $6,500 for all their dental work, but a dentist pal of the group’s refused to take payment.

The government pays refugees like the Suleymans a $1,486 monthly stipend, for six months (government-sponsored refugees get it for a year), and $1,350 a month in ongoing child tax credits. The Suleymans have saved somewhere between $12,000 and $18,000 as a cushion at the end of their first year in Canada, just as the group steps away, financially.

They’ll need it. “Without our contribution,” one of their sponsors said, “they’ll both need full-time minimum-wage jobs to have the same level of income they have now with our contribution.”

[The Globe and Mail]

Jihadists kept off terror list by US attack UN humanitarian convoy in Syria

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Militants from an Al-Qaeda-linked group, Jaysh al-Islam, have shelled a UN humanitarian convoy near Damascus, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) is a coalition of Islamist militant groups based near the Syrian capital, Damascus. The group positions itself as “brother” fighters of the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda that is recognized as a terrorist group by the UN and many nations, including Russia, Iran and Egypt.

Jaysh al-Islam had previously admitted to using chemical weapons against Kurdish militias in Aleppo earlier this year. It is also known to have used human shields and published ISIS-style execution videos.

Yet, Jaysh al-Islam has a delegation at the UN-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva. And in mid-May, Washington blocked a Russian proposal at the UN to delegitimize Jaysh al-Islam over their regular violations of the ceasefire. Britain, France and Ukraine sided with the US.

Washington said it would continue to back the group because they were “vetted” by the Saudis and play a role in the Syrian political process.

[RT]

Obama aims to double global refugee resettlement

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The White House will on Thursday rally businesses to give jobs to refugees ahead of a September summit where U.S. President Barack Obama will urge world leaders to boost humanitarian funds by a third and double the number of refugees being resettled.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said on Wednesday that the Obama summit during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations would also aim to get one million refugee children in school and one million more refugees access to legal work in the neighboring countries they fled to.

“The summit is by no means a panacea; even if we hit every target, our response will still not match the scale of the crisis,” Power told the United States Institute of Peace, adding that it would boost the number of countries trying to help.

She said the United States intended to meet its goal of taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees, out of a total 85,000 refugees this year and slammed calls by some Americans to halt the refugee program following attacks in Paris and Orlando. “Ignorance and prejudice make for bad advisors,” Power said.

[Reuters]

Child refugees pay the highest price

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It is estimated that approximately half of the 19.5 million registered refugees at the global level are children or youths. They are the most vulnerable victims of these conflicts.

Years of conflict have turned Syria into one of the most dangerous places to be a child, according to UNICEF. It is estimated that 5.5 million children are affected by the conflict, a number that is almost double from the year before. More than 4.29 million children inside Syria are poor, displaced or caught in the line of fire.

As a result of the fall in immunization rates — from 99 percent before the war to less than 50 percent now — polio has re-emerged in Syria after a 14-year absence. At the same time, doctors report an increase in the number and severity of cases of measles, pneumonia and diarrhea.

The capacity of the country’s health care system to provide assistance to the population has been seriously affected. Many doctors and health personnel have either been killed or have left the country. Sixty percent of the public hospitals have been damaged or are out of service.

Syrian refugee children are at very high risk for mental illness and have poor access to education. In the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, for example, one-third of all children displayed aggressive and self-harm behavior. According to Europol, Europe’s policy agency, thousands of unaccompanied refugee and migrant children have disappeared, raising fears they are being exploited and used for sex.

The post-traumatic stress disorder rate among Syrian refugee children is comparable to that observed among other children who have experienced war. A study by the Migration Policy Institute shows that refugee children who are not formally educated are more likely to feel marginalized and hopeless, making them probable targets for radicalization.

[Japan Times]

Tens of thousands of child refugees that left for Europe are missing

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UNICEF has released two reports on the tragic situation of refugee children who are fleeing areas of conflict and poverty. Between January 1 and May 31 of this year, the International Organization of Migration and others counted 7567 children amongst the desperate refugees who crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Italy. Of them, startlingly, 92 per cent came without an adult.

The International Organization for Migration has estimated that 80 per cent of them are victims of trafficking. What data Italian social workers have been able to accumulate shows that both boys and girls have been sexually assaulted on their journey–some girls even arrive pregnant.

And asylum in Europe is elusive. Children sit in refugee centers or prisons for months on end as their paperwork stutters through the system. Laws in many European states only allow children to be unified with their parents, not their extended families. This means that children cannot be turned over to aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings.

UNICEF finds that 96,000 children cannot be accounted for in the system. The children have vanished into Europe, “some may have fallen prey to criminal gangs.”

On 27 May, UNICEF signed an agreement with the Italian government to monitor the reception of refugees–particularly unaccompanied minors–into Italy.

[Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College]

Somali Diaspora mobilizing in wake of World Humanitarian Summit

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8 years ago Abdulkadir Ga’al fled the horrors of civil war in Somalia and ended up in Denmark. Since then, he has built a career as an employment advisor at the Copenhagen Municipality and he has been elected three times to the advisory board of the Danish Refugee Council’s Diaspora Program.

“Somalia is in need of emergency humanitarian assistance, health care, food security, water and sanitation,” Ga’al told CPH Post Weekly. “In March, the drought exacerbated by El-Nino hit Somalia with force and Somali Diaspora mobilized in order to organize fundraising events and send money and remittances to the people affected in those areas.”

According to the World Bank, in 2015 remittances were estimated to reach a total of 9.25 billion kroner (US$ 137,634,022) in Somalia and support 23 percent of the nation’s GDP. These numbers give a clear glimpse of the massive aid and effectiveness provided by Somali Diaspora.

Ga’al’s commitment towards his home country has recently been facilitated by the DEMAC project, which he represented at the first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul, Turkey. Ga’al had the opportunity to interact with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, conveying conveyed his concern about the Kenyan government’s plan to close the Dadaab refugee camp, which hosts around 350,000 people. Ga’al stressed that Somalia doesn’t have the capacity to receive refugees back home as the country doesn’t have the resources to relocate the people.

“Ban Ki-moon understood the issue, while he highlighted the Kenyan government’s security concern. Being such a populated camp, it could be infiltrated by the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab,” said Ga’al. Ki-moon pledged to speak with the president of Somalia and the deputy president of Kenya about Ga’al’s concerns.

Moreover, while speaking with Peter de Clercq, the deputy head of the UN’s Assistance Mission in Somalia, Ga’al underlined the need for international humanitarian actors to recognize the Diaspora’s engagements in humanitarian aid as complementary actors, not as competitors. “We have geographical knowledge, we speak the local language, we have access to local community partners, we have relevant and timely information and we are able to provide direct support.” said Ga’al.

[CPH Post]