Syria, where displaced people are helping displaced people
Ahmad Alragheb, food security program director for the Syrian NGO Mercy-USA, explains: “Humanitarians put themselves in very unsafe situations to save lives, but have no choice. choose any other.
“Humanitarian aid is the goal of the state authorities because it supports those trying to live resiliently,” said Alragheb, who left his hometown in Idlib, Syria in 2019. Many humanitarian workers have perished in this Middle Eastern country, but they continue to help people, preventing many from dying of starvation.
Volatile Syria, which has been plagued by a decades-long civil war, has seen nearly two million people flee their homes to seek shelter in other regions. Mercy-United States Mission, in partnership with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), regularly crosses the Syrian border from their offices in Türkiye to provide food support for 200,000 Interior People (IDPs) and shelter for 1,396 civilians in 15 camps in the country. This is possible thanks to the UN Security Council solution that allows humanitarians to cross the Syrian border safely from different points.
One of the main problems IDPs face is that the tents they live in are only designed to last a year. However, it is economically difficult to replace them and some IDPs have lived in the same tent for 5 years.
About 80% of those displaced are children and women, a particularly vulnerable group; Women’s privacy is an important issue and most tents, and living closely with their children, do not provide them with a safe space to express their concerns, or They are protected from aggression and they are not a healthy place to live: some women cannot even take off their headscarves for months because of frequent contact.
Alragheb explained that people have lost all their belongings, they have no place to recover their normal life and it is almost impossible to find work in Syria, which is facing, he said, “a the war never ends the cycle of problems”.
Women’s struggle for education in Afghanistan
The drive to help others can be strong enough to make people leave the comfort and safety of their homes, and go to a place in great crisis to fight for the human rights of those living there. .
This is the case of Veronica Houser, who moved from the United States to the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) mission in Afghanistan, two months after the Taliban took over Kabul last August. “I feel a contrast between the privilege I have where I was born, versus the violation of the rights of other women,” she said.
Having previously worked in Rwanda and South Sudan, she hopes to make a difference in Afghanistan by publishing stories and raising the voice of those who are not often heard.
One of the main concerns of the UNICEF mission is the ban on girls going to secondary school, the only country in the world where this happens. Most girls refuse to give up and hope that schools will reopen soon.
Meanwhile, UNICEF is distributing millions of textbooks and school supplies across the state, and is building new educational spaces if allowed. The United Nations agency has established women- and girl-friendly spaces where children can play, women can express themselves and have access to psychosocial support.
“The education crisis is also a defense and a mental health crisis,” says Houser. “These girls don’t get to see their friends, they don’t know what their future will look like, they feel anxious, some even have to get married early.”
