Category: Humanitarian Aid

Australia’s foreign aid budget hits rock bottom

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Cuts to Australia’s foreign aid budget as introduced last year are being maintained in the 2016 Budget. The latest reduction follows the biggest cut on record, with $1 billion slashed from the aid program 12 months ago.

Indonesia once again bears some of the brunt of the cuts, losing another 5% of funds, around $15 million, on top of a 40% cut last year. Two key nations involved in the government’s offshore refugee processing program, Papua New Guinea and Cambodia, emerged unscathed in the latest savings.

The government’s failure to restore the Australian aid budget is short-sighted and likely to damage Australia’s international reputation, aid agency CARE Australia has warned.

CARE Australia CEO Dr Julia Newton-Howes welcomed a modest increase to funding for humanitarian emergencies, but said the nation turned its back on the world’s poor.

“The Government’s refusal to reverse the final scheduled cut to the aid budget means Australia will become the least generous we’ve ever been with the lowest ratio of aid to the size of our economy ever,” she said. “Overall, the cuts will still be damaging to Australia’s international reputation and to our long-term interests, especially at a time when many other developed nations are increasing aid budgets.”

[Business Insider]

Granted a new life by the Pope

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On a warm evening in Rome, as waiters flapped tablecloths for outdoor diners at a trattoria down the cobbled alley, Ramy Al Shakarji leaned back on a bench and laughed as he described how the head of the Roman Catholic Church, plucked him, a Muslim, from a squalid refugee camp in Greece and flew him to a new life.

“When we were given the chance to come to Rome, my wife and I took about three minutes to decide ‘yes,’” he recalls. Making the offer to move to Italy was Daniela Pompei, an official with Catholic charity Sant’Egidio, which was asked by the Vatican at the last minute to find families and then host them back in Rome at its refugee shelter in the bustling Trastevere neighborhood.

Al Shakarji, 51, stopped laughing as he described the moment Francis greeted him before the flight. “I felt security and peace–a man like this is a father to the world,” he said.

The trip to Rome was the end of a long journey that started in Dair Alzour, a Syrian town under siege by Islamic State, where Al Shakarji recalls a rebellious neighbor’s decapitated head hanging from a balcony for three days. In March of last year, Al Shakarji decided to risk fleeing down mined roads and past snipers to reach Turkey, taking his wife and three children with him.

Another of the Syrians brought to Rome with Francis is Nour Essa. Her grandfather was a Palestinian who fled the new state of Israel in 1948 and settled in Syria. “The difference is there were two sides in 1948, whereas in Syria you can’t understand how many sides there are,” said Essa, 30.

Essa had escaped some of the initial turmoil of Syria’s civil war. She was living in Montpellier, France, while studying for a master’s in microbiology, before returning to her job in 2013 at Syria’s Atomic Energy Commission. She then married and had a child, but the war was creeping into her Damascus suburb. The couple fled, starting a terrifying, 10-day journey across ISIS-held territory in an ambulance and then in a cattle truck.

Stopping in Aleppo, her husband was ordered to fight by ISIS fighters–“real monsters,” said Essa. But a smuggler guided them through minefields toward Turkey, where after waiting out rough seas and numerous tangles with Turkish police, they made it to Lesbos on March 18, packed into a dinghy at night with 50 other refugees.

“I was shocked when we were asked if we wanted to go,” Essa said. What she is sure about is that no Muslim leader has made the gesture the pope did. “Muslim governments should be ashamed,” she said. “Instead of helping refugees, they close borders and stop visas for Syrians. If you want to work in Saudi Arabia, you cannot get a visa now.”

[LA Times]

Hi-tech humanitarian assistance

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An affordable prosthetic foot for war amputees is the Lausanne-based Humanitarian Tech Hub’s first project. The research and development programme aims to harness technology to solve humanitarian problems.

It is the fruit of collaboration between the Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). The hub will make sure that the solutions developed – in areas such as biomedical technologies, logistics and the environment – are effective, scientifically valid and appropriate to the reality on the ground.

Collaboration between the academic and humanitarian sector is not new. But what is different is about the EPFL project is this strategy to develop and scale up innovations.

In addition, the EPFL has 40 years’ experience of working with the developing world.

[SwissInfo.ch]

China legislates strict control of foreign NGOs

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The Chinese government announced that it has passed a strict law aimed at controlling and limiting the work of foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in China and their local partners, mainly through police supervision.

More than 7,000 foreign nongovernmental groups will be affected, according to state news reports. The proposed law caused considerable anxiety among foreign and Chinese nongovernmental organizations here after an early draft began circulating last year.  The most draconian aspect of the earlier drafts remain, despite widespread outcry from foreign groups and governments.

It requires that foreign nongovernmental organizations register with the Ministry of Public Security and allow the police to scrutinize all aspects of their operations, including finances, at any time. In China, where the domestic security apparatus has enormous power, the police could do that anyway, but the law formalizes that.

In addition, such groups must find an official Chinese partner organization. The law does not define what kinds of Chinese groups will be approved partners, and it is unclear how that determination will be made and by whom.

Certain types of nongovernmental organizations–like groups that work with Chinese human rights activists or lawyers–will have little chance of finding an official partner or registering with the police.

Some officials in Beijing have characterized foreign nongovernmental groups as “black hands” working to undermine one-party rule in the country. Those suspicions have grown under President Xi Jinping. Officials have accused such groups of instigating the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and protests in Tibet, as well as trying to quietly usher Chinese society toward Western ways via what Mao Zedong called a “peaceful evolution.”

[New York Times]

Turkey’s promise to stop the flow of refugees creates a new crisis

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Turkey is struggling to cope with the 2.7 million Syrians it hosts, and honor its agreement to stop refugees from crossing into Europe. Meanwhile, renewed fighting in Syria pushes tens of thousands of Syrians closer to the border with Turkey, in a sign that the problem could still get worse.

Turkey is scrambling to create long-term solutions for millions of people it had expected to house temporarily. An analysis released by several think tanks and aid groups in February listed these hurdles for refugees: bureaucracy, unemployment, poor housing conditions and limited access to education. As an example of the bureaucracy, the report noted, “a bank account was required to obtain a residence permit, while a residence permit was required to open a bank account.”

“When people flee from war, they usually do so hoping to return home soon” said Selin Unal, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee program in Turkey. “They move nearby, like just across the border, where they can keep an eye on their homes and livelihoods.”

Most Syrian refugees in Turkey are living along the southeastern border with Syria. But more than one million people are spread throughout the country, in cities and in rural areas. Istanbul alone has nearly 400,000 registered Syrians, according to the Turkish government.

Of the 700,000 school-age Syrian children in Turkey, fewer than half are enrolled. The Turkish government is developing a plan to try to close the gap, including creating schools that will employ Syrian teachers and teach in Arabic.

“After living day to day for five years, many migrants and refugees want to plan for the future, and this means being able to provide for their families themselves,” said Abby Dwommoh, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration in Turkey.

[New York Times]

Behind the global crackdown on NGOs, recognition of their power

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Around the globe, from Malaysia to Morocco and from India to Ethiopia, governments have been cracking down on activists who are trying to hold them to account. The worldwide trend constitutes “the broadest backlash against civil society in a generation,” says Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group.

Different governments use different methods: some simply close non-governmental organizations (NGOs) by decree; others starve them of funds, arrest their leaders, censor their reports, or send secret police to intimidate them.

Last year, according to a report by CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations, there were “serious threats to civic freedoms” in 96 countries. What is behind this blowback against the NGOs? Partly, it seems to be a reaction by authoritarian rulers–and some who claim to be democratic–to the increasingly vocal criticism that ordinary citizens direct at them.

“The resistance [to the NGOs] is more motivated because autocrats see the capacity” of their citizen-critics, adds Mr. Roth.

That resistance is hardening. In China, for example, though the NGO law’s text is still secret, it is expected to make the police responsible for managing foreign groups and to make registration more cumbersome.

Last year, the Indian government revoked the operating license of Greenpeace, the environmental watchdog, which had strongly criticized official mining and nuclear policies. The authorities have banned more than 9,000 Indian charities from receiving foreign funds since last April.

That is an approach taken most ferociously by the Russian government, which has forced NGOs receiving any money from abroad to register as “foreign agents,” a term suggesting traitorous intentions. If they take money from groups branded as “undesirable foreign organizations,” they could be prosecuted.

[Christian Science Monitor]

Red Cross says Afghanistan facing its worst humanitarian crisis since war began

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The crisis in Afghanistan has escalated to a new level of urgency, the outgoing head of the International Red Cross said Sunday, citing a record number of civilian casualties and evacuations of war wounded.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Jean-Nicolas Marti said the drawdown of NATO forces has led to a rise in fighting.

The Red Cross says the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan hit a record high for the seventh consecutive year in 2015, with more than 11,000 innocent men, women and children killed or wounded, Reuters reports.

Marti told The Telegraph that in 2015, the number of war wounded grew by 30 percent from the year before. The 2016 total is expected to exceed the 2015 figure before the summer “fighting season” begins.

Meanwhile, Afghans make up the second largest group of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe behind Syrians, as an estimated one million people have been displaced in the conflict, Reuters reports.

[Fox News]

Three million lack permanent shelter a year after Nepal earthquake

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A year after Nepal was devastated in an earthquake, 3 million people are still without permanent shelter and some marginalized groups have missed out on vital relief.

Aid agency Save the Children says about 600,000 families in Nepal continue to live under tarpaulins, bridges and in unsafe buildings in the wake of the magnitude 7.8 quake which hit on April 25 last year. Almost 9000 people were killed in the disaster and about 900,000 homes destroyed or damaged.

The scale of the disaster and logistical problems caused by Nepal’s mountainous terrain and limited road infrastructure have made relief and rehabilitation difficult. Surveys taken during the relief phase found two-thirds of quake victims did not have the information need to get relief and 61 per cent “thought aid was not being provided fairly”, the report said.

Save the Children country director Delailah Borja said, “No formal rebuilding program has commenced in the past 12 months, and that’s in part due to the sheer scale of the disaster and the massive logistical challenges in an extremely mountainous region. Millions of families are still living in the temporary shelter supplied by aid agencies months ago, having already braved a very cold winter and are now facing the prospect of another monsoon season, which will start in June.”

[The Age]

Ecuador earthquake aid

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A 7.8-magnitude quake, which struck Ecuador Saturday night, has killed at least 413 people, officials said Monday. More than 2,500 more were injured.

The hardest-hit area of the South American nation was the coastal Manabi Province, where about 200 people died, said Ricardo Peñaherrera of Ecuador’s national emergency management office.

Getting supplies and rescue crews to the affected areas has been a challenge. “The lack of water and communication remains a big problem,” Peñaherrera told CNN en Español. “Many highways are in bad shape, especially in the mountainous area, because it has been raining recently due to the El Niño weather phenomenon.”

Mexico, Spain, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Peru and other countries sent rescuers and aid. The European Union said Monday it had released €1 million in humanitarian aid. The United Nations said it was preparing a “major aid airlift,” and private aid organizations have also rallied.

Iraq’s humanitarian workers brace for Mosul influx

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A military operation to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group could produce the largest civilian displacement anywhere in the world this year, according to the United Nations — and critics say the UN and Kurdish authorities are unprepared for the influx.

Kurdish authorities, already caring for more than one million displaced people, are reluctant to allow more displaced people into areas under their control, amid concerns about possible infiltration by ISIL sympathizers.

An eventual assault on Mosul could displace more than one million more people, according to UN estimates.

“Even by our most conservative estimates, this could be the largest population movement anywhere in the world this year,” Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, told Al Jazeera.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has vowed that this will be the year Iraqi forces retake Mosul. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is expecting to receive between 300,000 and 500,000 displaced people from Mosul.

A third of Iraq’s 3.4 million displaced people have taken refuge in Kurdish areas, increasing the region’s population by nearly 30 percent, the highest ratio anywhere in the world. The World Bank estimates the displacement crisis cost the KRG $1.4bn in 2015, at a time when its economy was experiencing severe recession.

Both the Kurds and the UN say humanitarian funding is grossly lacking. So far, donors have pledged just $75m of the $861m that the UN has asked for in Iraq this year.

[Al Jazeera]