Category: International Cooperation

$121 Billion of U.S. foreign aid to Israel

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The recent visit of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress has opened up a rare split in the relations between the United States and Israel. On its surface, the issue appears to be purely political: Netanyahu was invited by House Speaker John Boehner without consultation of the White House, an apparent violation of protocol.

Still, if the past is any judge, U.S.-Israel relations will recover. Since it was founded in 1948, Israel has become the largest single recipient of U.S foreign assistance — a total of $121 billion, almost all of which has been in the form of military assistance. Among the findings of a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service:

  • This FY2015 foreign military financing (FMF) level would constitute roughly 55% of the United States’ total FMF funding worldwide and would finance 23% to 25% of the overall Israeli defense budget — percentages that clearly demonstrate the U.S. commitment to Israeli security and Israel’s dependence on U.S. support.
  • In addition to $3.1 billion in FY2015 funding, the Obama Administration also requested $96.8 million for joint US-Israeli programs and $175.9 million for Iron Dome, Israel’s short-range anti-rocket system.
  • The U.S. Defense Department also stores military supplies on Israeli bases in preparation for combat, and if needed, Israeli forces can request use of these supplies from the U.S. government in times of emergency, as happened in the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. The value of the U.S. materiel stored in Israel increased to $800 million in 2010, with Congressional approval for up to $1.2 billion.

[Read full article at Journalist Resource] 

Greg Matthews “that sense that I belong here”

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As a senior adviser for the International Rescue Committee, Greg Matthews rushes to disasters for a living.

He has helped refugees fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq, designing programs using a mix of traditional relief supplies, such as food and hygiene kits, with cash grants, job training, and placement and business start-up assistance.

Two things inspired Greg Matthews while growing up in Hartford, Conn. A 10th-grade social studies teacher got him thinking about international problems and the challenge of fixing them. And one day, when Matthews was giving swimming lessons, a student mentioned his father was leaving for Turkey for search-and-rescue work after an earthquake.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really cool,'” Matthews recalls.

Greg Matthews in Senegal, W. Africa

Even after marriage and the birth of a child, the seductive pull to international relief work remains. “It’s that sense that I belong there. This is what I’m good at. I can do this,” he says. “Every time I turn on the news and I hear that there’s a major disaster, (an) emergency breaking out somewhere across the world, I definitely get that adrenalin rush and my body starts kind of shaking a little bit.”

It’s quickly followed by a sense of dread, Matthews says. He wishes these terrible crises never happened at all.

[USA Today]

Canadian humanitarian worker held in North Korea?

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Sometime in the last two days of January, Hyeon-soo Lim crossed the land border from China into the north-eastern corner of North Korea. This was nothing particularly special for Mr. Lim, the senior pastor of one of Canada’s largest Korean churches. He had been to the Hermit Kingdom more than 100 times before.

He was expected to call home on Feb. 4. When he did not, the church initially did not panic. But more than a month has passed with no word, and his church is worried Mr. Lim has been detained in a country that has jailed several foreign Christians in recent years.

“He’s not a tourist that wandered off. He knows the language, he knows how to behave in a way that’s not offensive to the government.”

Lim’s church raised funds for the impoverished country, and supports orphanages, nurseries and a nursing home. Mr. Lim would often take in vitamins, medical supplies and warm clothing.

[Toronto Globe and Mail]

Sonia Khush “driven by ending human suffering”

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When humanitarian assistance pays off, dangerous risks are easier to take on, says Sonia Khush, a senior director for humanitarian response for Washington-based Save the Children. She cites Save the Children programs that allowed displaced Syrian children living in tents to return to classes or play in a new gymnasium.

“I go ahead because through all these emergencies, I’ve been able to see what a positive impact our programs have on children,” Khush says. “That’s very rewarding. I usually end up being willing to take the chance and go. But …there are probably places where I wouldn’t want to go.”

Khush, who recently returned from Liberia, has also spent time in Jordan and Lebanon working with Syrian refugees.

“You have to see what the needs of the people are and what you can deliver,” she says. “You have to think on your feet very quickly and, for me, I just enjoy that pace of work. We’re really driven by ending human suffering.”

It’s also necessary to pace the work, she says. Save the Children cycles workers out of troubled areas every six weeks.

Khush, who is single, says when someone doing the same work is kidnapped, “you keep thinking, ‘OK, I’m doing everything I possibly can to be safe.’ I know there’s a known element of risk. But I’m here for a reason.”

[USA Today]

Loss of US aid to Palestine over Israel

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On January 6, less than a week after Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas signed the treaty to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon announced the PA will become a member of the international tribunal on April 1. (As a member, the PA would be able to prosecute Israel for allegedly committing “war crimes”, such as Israel’s actions in Gaza this past summer.)

Ban’s announcement drew heat from the US Congress, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul introduced the “Defend Israel by Defunding Palestinian Foreign Aid Act of 2015,” which would halt aid to the Palestinian Authority until it withdraws its attempt at becoming a member of the court.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham suggested that US law demands an end to funding if the PA brings a case against Israel, citing the Appropriations Act of 2015, which states that funding the PA must be suspended if “the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court judicially authorized investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”

[The Weekly Standard]

If delivering humanitarian aid was easy, everybody would do it

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There is a dizzying complexity to shaping a humanitarian response that is irresistible to American aid doctor Pranav Shetty, who lives with his wife, Nora, in Arlington, Va.

Pranav Shetty (center) briefs US Ambassador Samantha Power in Liberia

When he trained health care workers and treated patients at the height of the Ebola epidemic last August in Liberia, the local hospital system was in shambles.

He organized the delivery of medical supplies in northern Iraq after attacks by the Islamic State left areas isolated. At the time, refugees from the overrun city of Mosul were flooding into the area. His work brought him as close as a mile from an Islamic State checkpoint.

“Everybody wants to have an impact on the world,” says Shetty. “The greatest impact is not to go to the places everybody goes to. The greatest impact is to help the people that nobody wants to help.”

His wife, who also did humanitarian work, said she occasionally tries nudging him toward the lesser of two dangerous destinations. Nora Shetty successfully lobbied him to fight a deadly virus. “With Ebola, you have a bit more ability to protect your own safety,” she reasons.

She describes her husband, among the first people the International Medical Corps sends to crises, as someone who disdains complacency and is committed to always improving his disaster-relief skills.

“You want to be challenged,” he explains. “You don’t want the same thing every day. If it was easy, everybody would do it.”

[USA Today]

For humanitarian aid workers, global dangers have never been so real

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These are spirited, grueling and perilous times for those trying to change the world. The risk of a gruesome death while serving humanitarian needs is frighteningly real.

“It’s a conscious choice and has to be a calculated choice,” says American aid doctor Pranav Shetty about heading into the world’s most dangerous places. Shetty, 33, is emergency health coordinator for the International Medical Corps based in Los Angeles. He has pivoted this past year between two headline-grabbing crises — the Ebola epidemic, and the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

In West Africa, thousands have died, including half of the health workers who became infected with Ebola. In the Middle East, tens of millions have been displaced, and the Islamic State’s savagery has swallowed up aid workers like 26-year-old Kayla Mueller.

“There’s always a certain amount of the unknown,” Shetty says by phone from Sierra Leone, where Ebola remains a deadly risk. “Everybody is taught to be hyper-aware.”

Mueller’s death struck the humanitarian community particularly hard, in part, because she was a young, idealistic woman who encapsulated with her words the passion behind what aid workers do. “For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal,” she told The Daily Courier in her hometown of Prescott, Ariz., about her work with refugees.

Mueller was kidnapped in 2013, a year when a record 460 aid workers were killed, wounded or kidnapped in dangerous places around the world, a 66% increase over 2012, according to data compiled by Humanitarian Outcomes, which provides research and policy advice to aid groups.

When a gruesome hostage killing posts to the Internet … the news reverberates through the aid community. “My first reaction is ‘Oh, my God, that could have been me,'” says Greg Matthews, 35, who has worked in the Syrian region for the New York-based International Rescue Committee. “That could happen to anybody at any time in any of the circumstances in which we work.”

Yet the challenge of providing relief in some of the world’s most chaotic environments, coupled with a lifelong desire to make a personal difference — and a restless hankering for adventure — keeps the humanitarian industry thriving.

[USA Today]

Only 5% of aid pledged to Gaza actually received

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Only about 5% of the international aid pledged to help rebuild Gaza after the conflict with Israel last year has actually been received, according to a Palestinian government source.

The source in the office of the Deputy Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa told humanitarian news service IRIN that while governments worldwide had pledged to contribute $5.4 billion to relief efforts, only about $300 million had actually been received, reports al Jazeera.

Gaza was heavily bombed by Israel during the month long war with Hamas in July last year, with nearly 100,000 homes destroyed and more than 200,000 people, most of them Palestinian civilians, killed, according to UN figures.

In a conference in Cairo following the conflict, countries around the world pledged billions towards reconstruction costs and aid.

In late January, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency announced that it had suspended all reconstruction work in Gaza after running out of money, and that tens of thousands of Gazans were living in rubble. “People are literally sleeping amongst the rubble, children have died of hypothermia,” Robert Turner, the agency’s director for Gaza said.

[International Business Times]

British aid worker shot dead in South Sudan

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A British aid worker in war-torn South Sudan was shot dead late Tuesday in the capital Juba, the government said.

The Briton, who was working for the US aid organization The Carter Center, was killed by a gunman who followed him into his compound in Juba, according to presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny. “He was driving in his car, and when he arrived at his gate he got out of the car, then while walking he was shot,” he said.

Aid workers have been targeted multiple times in the 14-month long war, including gunmen shooting down a UN helicopter and peacekeepers killed. The country is awash with guns, and shots are often heard at night. International charities have warned of increased harassment, surveillance and threats of expulsion from the government.

In August 2014, gunmen murdered at least six South Sudanese staff members of international aid agencies. In October, gunmen also abducted two UN workers in separate incidents in the war-ravaged town of Malakal.

The Carter Center, set up by former US president Jimmy Carter, is working in South Sudan in several areas, including trying to eradicate guinea worm, a particularly painful water-borne parasite.

[AFP]

 

55 aid workers killed in Syria since March 2011

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Kayla Mueller knew that she was putting herself in harm’s way when she slipped from to the Turkish-Syrian border into Syria, but the 26-year-old American felt compelled to help. Killed after being held captive by ISIS for more than a year, Mueller’s death followed that of a fellow American aid worker, Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by ISIS militants in November. British aid worker David Haines, was similarly executed in September.

While the threats to aid workers have come into a shocking light with their apparent targeting and brutal killings by ISIS militants, aid workers in Syria faced grave threats even before the Islamist militant group began to gain ground there last year. According to the Humanitarian Outcomes’ Aid Worker Security Database which tracks such figures, 55 aid workers have been killed since the start of the conflict in Syria in March 2011. In terms of absolute figures, that’s the highest number of aid worker deaths in any country aside from Afghanistan.

Trevor Hughes, the Director of Risk Management and Global Security at International Relief and Development (IRD) said that while ISIS’ attempts to capture, ransom, or kill foreigners is concerning, the group’s gruesome stunts haven’t had a real impact on his work — especially because many kidnappings are carried out by opportunists. “You have the shifting lines between rival groups, and just because you’re taken by a rival group that isn’t regime-aligned or ISIS-aligned doesn’t mean that they’re not going to see you as a commodity to get sold up which happens a lot in numerous of countries,” he said.

Of course there are real threats, he said, but the threats also affect those who are in desperate need of the food, sanitation kits, winterization materials, infrastructure repair material, and medical supplies that his organization provides to those who are “stuck” in of the conflict.

[Think Progress]