The Norwegian Refugee Council: A-5 Million Prize Gives This Humanitarian Group More Power to Suffeed to Stop the World from Failing
Jan Egeland speaks in a calm manner than befits his four decades of humanitarian work, but he becomes increasingly animated when discussing the record number of people currently displaced because of humanitarian crises across the globe.
This year alone, the group that he heads, the Norwegian Refugee Council, helped those affected by the war in Ukraine, the Afghanistan earthquake in June and the ongoing devastating drought in Somalia.
The council has been awarded the world’s largest annual Humanitarian Award for a nonprofit, worth $2.5 million, because of their efforts.
This award could not have come at more important time for us because we are challenged like never before. Our advocacy for targeted civilians has made us a target for authoritarian regimes and parties to armed conflicts who do not like the truth being told to the world. With the recognition and backing of the Hilton Prize we can do that with more authority and greater resources. The amount of money is significant, but it’s equally important for the recognition and prestige. I regard this as the Nobel Prize for humanitarian work.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/10/20/1129199362/a-2-5-million-prize-gives-this-humanitarian-group-more-power-to-halt-human-suffe
Frontline Aid for Refugees and Disdisplaced People in Conflict Areas. A Norwegian Foreign Minister and a Special Representative of the UN High Commission on Human Rights
Egeland is a former Norwegian foreign minister who held positions at Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross and the United Nations before becoming secretary general of the council. Upon returning from a trip to Somalia in June, he spoke with NPR about overlooked crises, equal protection for all refugees and reasons to hope.
We are a frontline humanitarian organization assisting refugees and displaced people in conflict areas. We were established after the liberation of Norway from the Nazis. The situation for most of the rest of Europe was worse at the time as Norway was receiving Marshall Aid from the United States. The relief efforts started out focused on refugees in Austria, Germany, Poland and the Balkans. Today we have 16,000 field workers in most of the biggest crises and wars of our time, from Ukraine to Colombia, from Congo to Myanmar.
The report measures the number of needy people compared with the coverage by the international media, money for crises and diplomatic efforts to stop hostilities. Last year the top 10 of the most neglected conflicts and displacement crises in the world were in Africa. More than 25 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo need help, yet it gets very little attention. It is the same for those countries as well.
Media attention and global funds are going to Ukrainian refugees. The Russian invasion began in February. What has been changed for people from the Ukranians?
The situation in Ukraine has become much worse with trench warfare and the destruction of entire cities. Some areas have become more stable where we are able to help the internally displaced and it’s now possible for Ukrainians to come back from abroad. Some have left from the south and the east of the country. I am afraid of the winter. We are preparing for winter with a winterization program and strengthened lines from the neighboring states.
It’s a good thing that we want to help our neighbor who looks like us, has the same religion and can easily integrate in our societies but we should give protection according to need. In Europe people from the Middle East or Afghanistan are met with a cold shoulder and barbed wire whereas Ukrainians are welcomed. It’s the same in the U.S., where women and children fleeing horrific violence in central America are not always well received. This is not an ordinary fight of values and we need to stand on the side of those who need protection.
Humanitarian principles of impartiality and independence are what keep us alive. We teach our colleagues not to get too close to a government that is involved in the conflict. But at the same time, we still need to have the respect, and the protection, of those parties. We always try to work on all sides – it pains me that we’re not able to work in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
It is now over a year since the West left Afghanistan, leaving behind 40 million mainly women and children, and they need our solidarity now more than ever. There must be engagement between the de facto authorities and the donor countries on issues such as girls’ education and minority protection. The very wrong response is to impose sanctions that do not take away food from Taliban soldiers but do make women and children starve.
I’m afraid of that. War and violence has displaced a hundred million people in recorded history. In 2011, it was 40 million. There has never been in modern times as many children going to bed hungry as there are this year. It is worse for some countries to be struggling with high energy prices than it is in the areas where we operate.
It’s dramatic. The mothers and fathers walked for hundreds of kilometers in the dark to get food and water. We need better use of existing resources. The Building ReSilious Communities inSOMalia (BRCiS) is a group of international and national NGOs that balance short-term needs with longer-term community readiness. I witnessed dams being built, and bore holes equipped with solar-powered pumps so people can start to feed themselves independently.
Donate to the international NGOs. Write to politicians to say we want to live by elementary rules of compassion and solidarity. Reach out to those refugees and migrants who come to our communities, befriend them, help them integrate.
It is a time of horrific contrasts. There have been so many people displaced by violence and conflict that no one has a chance to eat. Conflict, Climate Change and COVID have merged to create a lethal cocktail. Better technological advances, greater resources and effectiveness of national and international humanitarian and development organizations are the good news. The bottom two billion people should be able to be elevated due to the fact that there has never been as many billionaires. The people at the very top have the resources that could be used to reach people in need.
I come back an optimist whenever I return from visiting colleagues working in difficult and dangerous circumstances. After helping a million children go to school, I am surprised that most want to be doctors, engineers, farmers and builders when they are older.
The ANTAKYA earthquake: The World Health Organization’s first earthquake of the century and the need for urgent supplies to the affected areas of Syria
ANTAKYA, Turkey— Rescue crews on Saturday pulled more survivors, including entire families, from toppled buildings despite diminishing hopes as the death toll of the enormous quake that struck a border region of Turkey and Syria five days ago surpassed 25,000.
The magnitude 7.8 quake, which occurred in southern Turkey and collapsed buildings in that country and Syria, is the deadliest seismic event in the world in more than a decade, the AP reported. A huge earthquake and tsunami in Japan killed many people.
A disaster of this scope is rare and affects an area that is home to so many people. He said that it had affected an area of 500 kilometers in diameter that is home to more than 13 million people in Turkey and Syria, and he referred to it as the disaster of the century.
“I know my son is inside and I think he’s still alive. His brother dug with his hands to find him,” she told NPR. Hours later, as diggers chipped away at the ruins of the building, rescuers found Sedat’s body and wrapped it in a blanket for his mother to say goodbye.
The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition forces and the Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, who is accused of killing his own people.
She said that they are dependent on aid provided by the UN cross-border mechanism from Turkey which allows the UN and its partners to provide aid without the approval of the Syrian government.
More than 380,000 people have been temporarily displaced due to the disaster and Turkey has set up more than 61,000 tents for emergency shelter.
The organization’s largest facility is inDubai, with 20 warehouses, and its others are around the world. Planeloads of medicine, IV drips, anesthesia, surgical instruments, splints and stretchers are on their way to Haiti to help victims of the earthquake.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, arrived in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, bringing with him 35 tons of medical equipment, state news agency SANA reported. Another plane will bring another 30 tons of medical equipment to the area.
The labels help identify which kits are needed for the countries of need around the world. Green labels are reserved for emergency health kits — those for Istanbul and Damascus.
The trauma kits and emergency surgery kits that were used in response to the earthquake are what Robert is referring to.
The former firefighter from California worked in the Foreign Service and the U.S. Agency for International Development before joining the WHO. The organization faces a lot of challenges reaching earthquake victims, but the warehouses in the Middle East help bring aid quickly to people in need.
On a rare visit to this rebel-held enclave of a country broken and isolated by more than a decade of civil war, NPR saw no international crews of rescuers; no trucks loaded with machinery or medical aid; no streams of ambulances to save the wounded. The crossing into Syria was empty and silent.
The weather is not great at the moment. So it just depends on the condition of the roads, the availability of the trucks and then the permission to cross the border and deliver the humanitarian aid,” he says.
The International Humanitarian City: Why it is important to you to come to Damascus, and how to get there if you need it
“They’re not able to go home because their homes have not been cleared by an engineer as being structurally sound,” Blanchard says. “They’re literally sleeping and living in the office and trying to do work at the same time.”
The International Humanitarian City is home to the warehouses of the WHO, and it is 1.5 million square feet. The U.N. refugee agency is one of the organizations located in the zone.
The costs of storage facilities, utilities, and flights to carry relief items into affected areas are covered by the government of Dubai. The inventory is procured by the agencies themselves.
Up to 150 countries receive $150 million worth of emergency stock and assistance each year. Personal protection equipment, tents, food and other critical items need to be in place inclimate disasters, medical emergencies and global outbreaks.
The reason we are doing a lot and the reason why this hub is the largest one in the world, is because of its strategic position. “From Dubai, in a few hours’ flight, you can serve two-thirds of the world’s population living in Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa.”
Due to a problem with the plane’s engine, WHO supplies for Damascus were still grounded in Dubai as of Wednesday evening. A situation he described as being “evolving by the hour” is the attempt to get direct flights to the government-controlled airport in Aleppo.
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in today’s CNN offers a three-times-a-week look at the biggest stories in the Middle East. You can sign up here.
Analysts warn that the victims of the earthquake in Syria may become hostages of the politics that have divided the nation for over a decade.
The Assad regime has systematically suckd off aid and blocked it from going to non-regime areas in the past according to a Washington-based human rights lawyer. “The international community must urgently find ways to ensure that emergency assistance and support reaches the people of northwest Syria.”
Turkey is a member of NATO and has grown in international stature in recent years. The regime in Syria is ruled by a number of different groups. Iran and Russia are both global pariahs due to the brutal suppression of an uprising there that started in 2011.
Most Western countries are against the Syrian regime. But leader Bashar al-Assad has begun forging ties with former enemies as regional states welcome him back into the fold. While in Abu Dhabi, Assad received a warm welcome from the United Arabs, Turkey’s President said that the two could meet for peace talks soon.
There has been “no investment” in the isolated region for over a decade, said Kieran Barnes, Syria Country Director for the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps. Tens of thousands of people are living in temporary shelters with no access to water, he said.
That hasn’t been received well by activists and observers who fear that the regime could hamper timely aid to thousands of quake victims in rebel-held areas, most of whom are women and children, according to the UN.
The civil war in northern Syria has made it difficult for aid agencies to reach earthquake-hit areas. The Foreign Minister says aid must go through Damascus.
“We are exploring all avenues to reach people in need and conducting assessments on feasibility,” Madevi Sun-Suon, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), told CNN on Tuesday. “We do have aid but this road issue is a big challenge as of now.”
The Syrian regime has also used the opportunity to call for sanctions against it to be lifted. Its UN envoy Sabbagh said on Tuesday that planes refused to land at Syrian airports because of American and European sanctions. He said that even countries that would like to help would not be able to use the airplane cargo because of the sanctions.
In November of last year, a UN-appointed human rights expert called for the immediate lifting of sanctions against Syria, saying they were hurting ordinary citizens there.
It would be quite ironic, if not counter-productive, for us to reach out to a government that brutalized their people over the course of a dozen years now and they’re responsible for most of the suffering that they’ve suffered.
“It’s a very convenient time for the regime to be making that argument because if sanctions were dropped, the ramifications of the much broader geopolitical situation would be game changing,” said Lister.
The Saudi-Behind-Earthquake-Mime Interaction After the Saudi-Bahamanian Arab-Brazil Boycott
Iran is attempting to protect its military assets from air strikes by Israel, and in May it gave information about another underground base which houses drones.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is ready to restart negotiations over Sweden’s application to join NATO once Turkey is done with them, according to a report.
Turkey has yet to approve NATO membership applications from Sweden and Finland due to the war in Ukraine, and other member states have already given their approval. Turkey last week said it looks positively on Finland’s application, but does not support Sweden’s, even though the two Nordic neighbors are seeking to join at the same time.
Last year, the three nations reached an agreement on how to proceed, but Ankara stopped talks last month due to growing tension after a far-right politician in Sweden burned a Quran. Turkey goes to elections in May.
It comes amid an apparent thaw in relations. Bahrain’s crown prince spoke with Qatar’s emir in a phone call last month, in a sign the two Gulf states could move towards repairing relations two years after the Arab boycott was lifted. The conversation came after the Qatari emir and Bahrain’s king attended a small Arab summit hosted by the UAE’s president in Abu Dhabi.
The boycott of Qatar began in January 2016 and ended in January 2021. But since then there have been no bilateral discussions between Doha and Manama to resolve remaining differences. All but Bahrain restored travel and trade links in 2021.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/middleeast/syria-left-behind-earthquake-mime-intl/index.html
A UN report on the suspension of the Twitter account that tweeted “Quranic snippets” from the Islamic holy book and the humanitarian response to the Syrian quake
AlMosahf (The Quran), an account that tweeted snippets from the Islamic holy book, had more than 13 million followers before Twitter took action against it.
One user stated that he did not think Musk violated the rules because of its quote from the Holy Quran. We demand the lifting of the suspension of this account.”
Some people were not upset about the suspension. Some people found the account’s use of incomplete Quranic verses to be out of context and changes the meaning of the text.
The account owner seems to have sister accounts in English, French and German, where it posts translations of Quranic verse. Another sister account that shows Quranic videos has been campaigning for the original account to be unblocked.
Conditions for the 10.9 million people affected by the disaster in Syria are being further hit as fresh snowfall worsened the situation further for people across five governorates, according to the UN.
The UN Ocha said that on Thursday a convoy with six trucks crossed through the Bab Al Hawa crossing to get shelter items and non food items for people in need.
The delivery on Thursday ends a three-day period during which no aid arrived at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey to rebel-held areas of northern Syria – just 300 bodies, according to the administration that controls the only access point between the two countries.
Immediately after the quake, the United Nations said roads to the crossing were blocked, but as of Wednesday they were clear, raising questions as to why it was taking so long for help to arrive.
Doctors without Borders: ensuring humanitarian help in Idlib, Syria, during the quake and aftermath of the 2011 October 11 earthquake
Abu Muhammad Sakhour, a former merchant, is volunteering as a nurse in the rebel-held city of Idlib, dressing wounds for quake victims and checking up on the injured who have been discharged from crowded hospitals.
At the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, protesters hold signs asking why only bodies are being allowed through. The bodies belong to Syrian refugees who sought safety in Turkey and are now being sent back to be buried on home soil.
Muhammad Munther Atqi, from the Independent Doctor’s Association, is living out of his car with his family in Gaziantep, Turkey, but is in close contact with colleagues in Syria. He said that hospitals there have been overrun with bodies and staff are waiting for families to identify them so they can be taken away.
As water supplies dwindle, and disease threatens to spread, survivors are facing their own challenges. Moutaz Adham, Oxfam’s country director for Syria, said residents are struggling to find food – even bread is hard to come by because so many bakeries collapsed in the quake.
According to Doctors without Borders, the UN Security Council resolution which allowed aid to cross four areas on the Turkey-Syria border, has restricted access to the area.
However, since 2021, Russia and China have used their veto power to reduce the number of crossings from four to just one – Bab al-Hawa. In January, less than one month before the quake, the UNSC unanimously voted to keep it open, a vote reluctantly backed by China and Russia, whose ambassador said it enabled aid to flow to a Syrian enclave “inundated with terrorists.”
“We don’t need the politics. We don’t need the game going on. Barnes said that the border crossing needs to be focused on by the international community. Now that we have gone past the first phase of finding people, we are moving into the humanitarian phase. Basic shelter, food, and water is needed by people.
The number of people in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquake stood at 15.3 million, but that number will have to be revised, El- Mostafa Benlamlih said.
An aid worker distributing supplies across cities in northern Syria told CNN on Thursday that homeless people have been sleeping in their cars amid a “very, very difficult,” situation.
Dr. Mostafa Edo of the US-based NGOs Med Global stated that those who are alive under the rubble might die.
“He is using the disaster as a ticket to remove sanctions,” said Omar Abu Layla, executive director of Deir Ezzor 24, a research organization that delivers news from Syria’s Deir al-Zour province. We can bring aid to Syria. Time is critical. We are playing with life and death.”
Humanitarian partners on the ground are able to assist in the aftermath of the earthquakes. This is a regime… that has never shown any inclination to put the welfare, the wellbeing, the interests of its people first.”
Syrians are confused as to where their next meal comes from. When we say meal, it’s not about vegetables, not about meat… Moutaz Adham is the country director for Syria for the charity Oxfam.
The crowd chants “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for God is Great. Volunteers and civil defense groups — themselves earthquake survivors — pull a boy out from the rubble alive in rebel-held northwestern Syria.
A day earlier, another video went viral showing volunteer rescuers in a different part of the rebel-held territory saving a family — two girls, a boy and their father — from under the rubble some 40 hours after the quake.
Many of the 4.6 million residents had fled here from other parts of the country, searching for safety from the barrel bombs and airstrikes of the Syrian regime and its ally, Russia.
On the lack of humanitarian aid and international aid in Syria after the 2011 September 11 earthquake, a statement from the Foreign Minister Mohammed Juma
Humanitarian aid and international aid did not arrive in the 72 hours that followed the earthquake, he said.
“Rescue efforts are being carried out by poorly equipped civil defense groups and civilians are trying to help,” Kelliah said. “Everyone’s waiting for international rescue and aid just to be able to process what happened, this catastrophe.”
“The situation remains grim in north-west Syria where only five percent of reported sites are being covered by search and rescue,” the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.
There are no shelter for people in the large region as temperatures remained below freezing. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but is still struggling to reach many people in need.
Assad was speaking near a building destroyed by the earthquake and said that the Western countries have no regard for the human condition. This comment is in line with statements heard from government officials and Syria’s state-run media, who have pinned the lack of humanitarian aid and hindered rescue equipment on US and EU sanctions.
Assad and his wife, Asma, visited different sites affected by the earthquake and visited survivors at a hospital in Aleppo, pictures on state-run news agency SANA showed.
There is a long-running civil war in northern Syria that complicates the delivery of supplies to areas ravaged by an earthquake. Any aid given to the Syrians must go to Damascus, says the Foreign Minister.
JINDERIS, Syria — Mohammed Juma sleeps on the heap of rubble that crushed his family as he survived. In the freezing nights, the 20-year-old and others in this town — still dazed and in shock — burn possessions found in the debris for heat.
By contrast, across the border in the northwest of Syria, residents of the town of Jinderis heard the screams of those trapped under the rubble but, without the right machinery and equipment, were powerless to save them.
Mohammed Juma said his wife and their two children, Ali and Hussein, were alive when their home collapsed on them. Juma and his neighbors pulled at the shattered concrete for hours until their hands bled, but the effort was futile.
The Syrian civil defense teams do not have the equipment to recover the dead. At least 850 bodies were pulled from the rubble on Friday morning in Jinderis. Zakaria Tabakh, 26, remembers cuddling his son, 2-year-old Abdulhadi, to sleep and laying him in his bed, where he was killed by the falling debris. Tabakh’s wife died in the bed beside him. He said that few friends were able to come because they were too busy with their own burials.
After years of war, they’ve been left with nothing. Tens of thousands now live with almost no access to basic services in makeshift tents set up in the olive groves where the mud clogs and weighs down the legs of children playing outside.
Less than one hour’s drive from one of the open border crossings, the town of Sawran now has no running water. The home of the Turki family is on the other side of the main street. A family of seven were murdered across the road. Neighbors said they had moved to Sawran after fleeing their home in Khan Sheikhoun, where in 2017 the Syrian government attacked the population with the nerve agent Sarin, killing 89 people.
The rescue of the Narli family was being broadcasted on Turkish television after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Monday. The first to be saved was the 12-year-old Nehir Narli.
That followed the rescue earlier in the day of a family of five from a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, in Gaziantep province, TV network HaberTurk reported. Rescuers chanted, ” God is great!” The father was the last family member to be lifted to safety.
A girl’s rescue in the aftermath of a seismic earthquake and her death in Gaziantep province: “God is great!”
He said that there were no stones left in some of the settlements near the fault line.
In the 133rd hour since the earthquake, a woman in her 20s was pulled out of the rubble by another person in the same hour. Ahead of her rescue, police announced that people shouldn’t cheer or clap in order to not interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. She was covered in a thermal blanket on a stretcher. Rescuers were hugging. Some shouted “God is great!”
A father and his 3-year-old daughter were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye in Gaziantep province just an hour before a 7-year-old girl was saved in the same province.
The rescues brought shimmers of joy amid overwhelming devastation days after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake and a powerful aftershock hours later caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 25,000, injuring another 80,000 and leaving millions homeless.
Not everything ended so well. Rescuers in Hatay province helped a girl who was trapped inside the debris of a collapsed building. She died before medical teams could free her from the rubble, Hurriyet newspaper reported.
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors were quickly waning amid freezing temperatures. Rescuers were shifting to thermal cameras to help identify life amid the rubble, a sign that any remaining survivors could be too weak to call for help.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors
A miracle come out of a collapsed building: Samurai Canbulat, the mother of my son and his wife, wife, and child, and the wife of his father, was killed
An Indian Army medical team started treating patients in a temporary field hospital in the southern city of Iskenderun, where a main hospital was demolished, as aid continued to arrive.
Wincing in pain, he said he had been rescued from his collapsed apartment building in the nearby city of Antakya within hours of the quake on Monday. He was released without getting the proper treatment for his injuries after getting basic first aid.
I buried everyone I lost, and then came here. Canbulat said his daughter was dead, my sibling died, my aunt and her daughter were pregnant with my son’s child, and the wife of her son died.
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday. There were pits dug by bulldozers and backhoes to hold the trucks that were loaded with body bags. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take photographs.
The person with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who does not wish to be identified said that the first day of operation saw 800 bodies being brought to the cemetery. By midday on Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 had been buried.
If people survive, it’s a miracle. He said that most of the people that come out are dead.