End to Syrian ceasefire threatens new round of civilian flight

As the end of a five-day ceasefire approaches in Syria’s northeast, thousands of civilians who have fled their homes – many of them several times already during the country’s eight and a half year war – face the prospect of having to do so once again.  Both humanitarians and the people they help are worried about what will happen if the violence kicks off again.

Hedinn Halldorsson, a spokesperson for OCHA, the UN’s emergency aid coordination body said, explains that the dangers civilians face rise every time their lives are upended. “The risk of gender based violence against women and children… increases. There is also a considerable psychological impact; distress, caused by [each] displacement.”

“They’ve lost everything; their homes, their income. They are terrified of everything, even of people asking them their names,” said Zozan Ayoub, the headmistress of an elementary school in Hassakeh who is now running the building as a shelter. “They have no psychological support. They are five families to one room, and they lack electricity, food, and gas for cooking.”

In 2013, Omar and her family fled their hometown of Tel Abyad when clashes broke out between Kurdish fighters and ISIS. They traveled westwards to Kobani, where they stayed until ISIS advanced on the city in late 2014, then forcing them to flee into Turkey. When Tel Abyad was liberated from the militants in 2015, she and her family returned to their hometown, only to flee home once again when Turkish airstrikes began with the new offensive.

“We are civilians; what do they want from us?” she asked angrily.

The UN warns that this cycle of displacement translates into extreme physical and mental stress. People are unable to hold down jobs, ultimately forcing more families to depend on aid to get by. This is compounded by the fact that unlike refugees, displaced people have not crossed a border for sanctuary, and largely remain close to the conflict they are trying to escape from.

[The New Humanitarian]

Four years of growing callousness in the central Mediterranean

In the past six years, more than 15,000 people have died or gone missing in the waters between Libya and the southern shores of Europe. Stretched out over time, death on this scale is numbing; it is easy to overlook exactly what is happening and difficult to continue to care.

During the past four years, European policies have made the death rate in the central Mediterranean rise from one for every 40 people who reached Italy to one for every 12.

When NGOs operating search-and-rescue boats stepped in to try to fill the gap, the rescuers were heros. They garnered positive press coverage and won humanitarian awards. One NGO was given a European Citizen’s Prize in 2016 by the European Parliament for its “contribution to European cooperation and the promotion of common values”.

Smugglers changed their tactics, switching from rickety old fishing boats to even more precarious inflatable rafts. Between 2015 and 2017, on days with good weather, so many boats would set out from Libya that the NGOs weren’t able to respond to all of the incidents at the same time.

In Europe, resentment about migration was growing, fueling the rise of far-right political parties. Centrist governments scrambled to adopt tough-on-migration policies, hoping to prevent themselves from sliding in the polls. Search-and-rescue NGOs became a favorite scapegoat. In April 2017, a Sicilian prosecutor claimed that NGOs were working with smugglers to help migrants and asylum seekers reach Europe, only to say, a few months later, that “no evidence [had] yet been found” to back up his statement.

Since the campaign against search-and-rescue NGOs began, the number of asylum seekers and migrants reaching Italy has dropped precipitously, from 120,000 in 2017 to just over 8,000 so far this year. But the decrease is simply the result of European policies that have kept people trapped in Libya, where thousands of asylum seekers and migrants have been stuck in dismal conditions in Libyan detention centres, where torture, sexual violence, extortion and other abuses regularly occur.

The beginning of September saw an unexpected turning point in the campaign against search-and-rescue NGOs. Italy’s populist-far right governing coalition suddenly collapsed and NGO boats are once again allowed to dock in Italian ports, and s deal between Italy, Malta, Germany, and France shows some progress among EU countries on sharing the responsibility of hosting asylum seekers and migrants disembarked in Italy.

These are positive steps, but they aren’t solutions, and they are taken on shaky ground

[Read full article at The New Humanitarian]

US restores aid to Central America after reaching migration deals

The United States restored economic aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that had been cut off after the Trump administration complained the three Central American countries had done too little to halt a surge in migration.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced that some “targeted assistance” would resume as they praised governments of the three countries for reaching immigration agreements with the United States.

The three countries from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America have sent record numbers of migrants toward the United States in recent years, fueling Trump’s rhetoric as part of his “zero tolerance” anti-immigration policy. Pompeo said in a statement that he had cut off the aid earlier this year on Trump’s direction “until the governments of these countries took sufficient action to reduce the overwhelming number of migrants coming to the U.S. border.”

Neither Trump nor Pompeo said how much of the hundreds of millions of dollars of suspended aid would be released. The Washington Post, citing an unnamed person familiar with the decision, reported it amounted to $143 million.

The Trump administration requires asylum-seekers to first seek safe haven in a third country they pass through on the way to the United States. The administration contends the majority of asylum-seekers are really economic migrants who will stay home if their only option is to seek asylum somewhere else.

[Reuters]

The world loses $400 Billion of food before it reaches stores

The world loses about $400 billion of food before it even gets delivered to stores, according to the United Nations. Some 14% of all food produced is lost annually, with central and southern Asia, North America and Europe accounting for the biggest shares, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report, citing the latest data as of 2016.

Food wastage is drawing increased scrutiny because more than 820 million people are estimated to go hungry each day, and because of the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Consumers also squander huge amounts. As much as 37% of animal products and potentially a fifth of fruit and vegetables may be wasted after being purchased, according to the FAO. Rich nations have higher levels of waste due to limited shelf life or poor consumer planning, while poorer countries typically grapple with climate and infrastructure issues.

Boosting farm productivity through research and development has been found to be more cost-effective than curbing post-harvest losses, the FAO said. Better cold storage and infrastructure would help reduce losses, but more detailed data on the supply chain is needed to tackle the problem, it said.

[Bloomberg]

Tens of thousands of war-torn civilians in Syria flee yet more violence

Aid agencies, military leaders and senior international officials including NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker have warned that hundreds of thousands of people are in immediate danger from Turkey’s offensive targeting Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

Syria is already hosting one of the world’s most complex humanitarian crises, with millions of people displaced both within and outside its borders, and the Turkish offensive threatens to add a frightening new dimension. Aid agencies said many of those in the area where the controversial offensive is focused have already survived the brutality of the Islamic State era. Many have been displaced multiple times during Syria’s long war.

The UK-based agency Save the Children states: “Currently, there are 1.65 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in this area, including more than 650,000 displaced by war. All essential services including food, water, shelter, health, education and protection must be consistently provided to all civilians, or we could see another humanitarian disaster unfold before our eyes. In addition to the Syrian civilians in the north-east, there are thousands of women and children living in camps across the area … who rely completely and exclusively on humanitarian aid. Any interruption to camp services which are already overstretched would put their lives at risk.

“Children in Syria who have fled ISIS-held areas are innocent and swept up in horrific events far beyond their control. Their short lives have been full of violence and fear. All children deserve [the] chance to recover.”

In sharp-edged remarks aimed at Turkey, European commission president Juncker pointed out that the EU is contributing €6bn to Turkey to help support the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in the country, adding that Europe would not contribute to the creation of a “safe zone” in northern Syria. While acknowledging that Turkey has security concerns on its border with Syria, Juncker said: “If the Turkish plan involves the creation of a so-called safe zone, don’t expect the European Union to pay for any of it.”

[The Guardian]

Turkish president threatens to send 3.6m refugees to Europe

Turkish warplanes and artillery continue to strike border towns in north-eastern Syria, after its troops crossed into the region to wrest it from US-backed Kurdish forces. An earlier barrage of airstrikes and artillery signalled the beginning of a long-planned operation. The Turkish military later said it had hit 181 “militant targets”.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has threatened to “open the gates” for Syrian refugees in his country to migrate to Europe if the continent’s countries label Turkey’s military campaign in north-eastern Syria an “occupation”.

Video footage showed civilians fleeing towns with columns of smoke rising in the background and jet trails visible in the sky. Kurdish activist groups estimated tens of thousands of civilians had fled their homes after the beginning of the Turkish offensive. Pictures and video from border towns shared on social media showed wrecked buildings and bodies in the rubble.

President Trump presented the invasion as a historical inevitability, saying Turks and Kurds “have been fighting each other for centuries”. And he downplayed the US debt to Kurdish fighters, saying: “They didn’t help us in the second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy.”

Turkey says it is seeking to establish a 20-mile (32km) wide buffer zone along the border against the threat of what it says are Kurdish terror groups as well as ISIS. It also hopes to resettle Syrian refugees in the zone.

[The Guardian]

Humanitarian concerns as Turkey launches Trump-sanctioned military assault on Kurds in Syria

Rights groups and anti-war activists warned of a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” Wednesday as Turkish forces invaded northeastern Syria and launched airstrikes against Kurdish targets, forcing civilians to flee in panic. Activists reported airstrikes on a town on Syria’s northern border and a Kurdish official said warplanes targeted civilians, causing a “huge panic.”

The attack comes days after U.S. President Donald Trump gave his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a green light to begin the operation by announcing the abrupt withdrawal of American forces from northeastern Syria.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) warned in a statement Wednesday that Turkey’s assault “will spill the blood of thousands of innocent civilians because our border areas are overcrowded.”

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali accused Turkey of deliberately targeting “civilian areas.” Fighters with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which leads the SDF, told CNN that hundreds of civilians scrambled to escape northeastern Syria as Turkey began bombarding the area.

Also on Wednesday, ISIS militants targeted a post of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, which was once the de facto ISIS capital at the height of the militants’ power in the region.

The Turkish operation will ignite new fighting in Syria’s 8-year-old war, potentially displacing hundreds of thousands of people, and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported that people had begun fleeing the border town of Tal Abyad. Kurdish politician Nawaf Khalil, who is in northern Syria, said some people were leaving the town for villages farther south.

The local civilian Kurdish authority known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria asked the international community to live up to its responsibilities as “a humanitarian catastrophe might befall our people.”

Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned Turkey’s plans for an invasion, calling it a “blatant violation” of international law and vowing to repel the incursion. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Washington of playing “very dangerous games”:  “Such reckless attitude to this highly sensitive subject can set fire to the entire region, and we have to avoid it at any cost,” he said. Russian news media said Moscow communicated that position to Washington.

[CBS/Common Dreams]