A 2.5 Million Prize for a Non-Norwegian Non-Profitarian Organization and the Impact of a Cold War in the Middle East
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.
Last year we helped over 10 million refugees and displaced people, this year we need to reach more. People need to become self reliant as soon as possible and we need to be smarter because our enemies are bigger and worse. The money will help us get staff development, we have local colleagues who can do that. We have over a thousand humanitarian workers in Afghanistan, but 25 are international. In general, 99% of our staff are non-Norwegian. We will use the funds to help build on our longstanding mediation between warring groups, as well as to help farmers and herdsmen compete for land and water resources.
In recognition of these efforts, the council this year has been awarded the world’s largest annual humanitarian award for a nonprofit — worth $2.5 million.
It is more important than ever that we receive this award, because we are challenged like never before. Advocacy for targeted civilians has lead to us becoming targets for regimes that don’t like the truth to be told. The recognition and support of the Hilton Prize will allow us to do that. It’s a considerable sum of money, but of equal importance is the recognition and prestige. I consider this to be a 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
Eleven Years of Refugeeing: Norwegian Perspective on Refugees and Disdisplaced People in Conflict Areas. From Norway to the United States
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 help refugees and displaced people in conflict areas. The liberation of Norway fromNazi occupation led to the creation of us. The situation was worse for most of Europe than Norway at the time, even though it was receiving Marshall Aid from the United States. Our early relief efforts focused on refugees in Austria, Germany, Poland and the Balkans — and it grew from there. Most of the biggest crises and wars of our time are being fought by 16,000 field workers.
An annual report is issued measuring the number of people in greatest need versus the international media coverage and money is spent on the crises. The most neglected conflicts in the world last year were in Africa. More than twenty five million people are in need of assistance, yet there is little attention paid to it. The same is true for Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Chad and Somalia.
The attention is going to Ukrainian refugees. Russian invaders were launched in February. What has changed for Ukrainian refugees?
The situation in the Ukraine has gotten worse in the last few years with the destruction of towns and cities by trench warfare. Some areas have become more stable so that we can help the internally displaced, and the Ukrainians who fled abroad are now returning home. Some people from the south and east of the country are still being driven out. I’m afraid for the winter. Millions will be freezing soon so we are preparing a winterization program and strengthening logistic lines from the neighboring states.
It’s nice to help a neighbor who is like us but we need to give protection to the ones who need it the most. In Europe people from the Middle East and Afghanistan are met with a cold shoulder and barbed wire, while 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. We must support the people who need protection, and this is a battle of values.
Humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality underpin our day to day lives. This means we teach our colleagues not to take sides and not to get close to a government which is a party to the conflict. But at the same time, we still need to have the respect, and the protection, of those parties. We try to work on all sides and we’re not able to do that 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. It’s the first time in recorded history that 100 million people have been displaced by war. In 2011, it was 40 million. This year is the most children going to bed hungry in modern times. We need some countries to recognize that while they are struggling with high energy prices and nationalistic tendencies at home, it is significantly worse in the areas where we operate.
It’s truly dramatic. I saw mothers and fathers walking for hundreds of kilometers to seek water and food. We need to invest and use our resources in a better way. The BricS is a group of 9 national and international NGOs that were created to balance short-term humanitarian needs with longer-term community preparedness. Dams and bore holes with solar-powered pumps were built so people could start to feed themselves on their own.
Join and support the international NGOs. We want to live by rules of compassion and solidarity if we write to politicians. Help the refugees and migrants integrate by befriending them.
It is a very sad time. Never have there been so many displaced by violence and conflict, and so many with no chance to feed themselves. Climate change, COVID and conflict have merged to create a lethal cocktail. But the good news is that never have there been more effective national and international humanitarian and development organizations, better technological advances and greater resources. Never have there been as many billionaires, so there should be a possibility for us to elevate the bottom two billion people. Some of the very top people have huge amounts of money and could have aided us in reaching people in need.
I come back an optimist whenever I return from visiting colleagues working in difficult and dangerous circumstances. We have now helped more than a million children go to school and when I ask them what they want to become when they are older, they don’t want to be fighters or soldiers or terrorists or criminals; they all want to be doctors, engineers, farmers and builders.
A Disaster Relief Warehouse in the Downtown Dubai Business District: Reaching the Most Displaced Victims of an Earthquake and the U.N.
DUBAI — In a dusty, industrial corner of Dubai, far from the city’s gleaming skyscrapers and marbled buildings, boxes of child-sized body bags are stacked in a massive warehouse. They will be shipped to Syria and Turkey for earthquake victims.
Aid has started pouring into Turkey and Syria, but organizations are struggling to reach the most vulnerable. Rescue teams are racing to reach survivors in frigid temperatures, even as the hope of finding people alive is diminishing with every hour.
Color-coded labels help identify which kits are for malaria, cholera, Ebola and polio for countries in need around the world. Emergency health kits with green labels are reserved for Istanbul and Damascus.
The kits used in the response to the earthquake are primarily for trauma and emergency surgery.
Before working in the WHO he was a Firefighter in California and worked for the Foreign Service and the US Agency for International Development. He said that the organization is facing logistical challenges reaching victims of the earthquake but that their warehouses help deliver aid rapidly to countries in need.
The U.N. is trying to get into the rebel-held northwestern part of Syria through a humanitarian corridor. Some 4 million internally displaced people there have little heavy machinery of the sort that might be found in other parts of Turkey and Syria, and hospitals are poorly equipped, damaged, or both. Volunteers are digging through the rubble.
The weather is not looking good right now. 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.
While Turkey has received an outpouring of support and aid from dozens of countries, outreach to Syria has been less enthusiastic, raising concerns that victims on one side of the Turkish-Syrian border may be neglected while others are provided for.
The World Relief Organization’s Warehouses in Damascus: Impact of Syria’s Earthquake-Devastating Misfortune
“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 sleeping and living in the office and doing work at the same time.
The WHO’s warehouses are part of a 1.5 million square-ft. zone of Dubai known as International Humanitarian City, the largest humanitarian hub in the world. The zone is also home to warehouses for the U.N. refugee agency, World Food Program, Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations, UNICEF and others.
The government of Dubai covers the cost of storage facilities, utilities and flights carrying relief items into affected areas. The agencies purchase the inventory.
Between 120 and 150 countries are where $150 million worth of emergency stock and assistance is dispatched every year. Personal protective equipment, tents, food and other critical items are needed for medical emergencies, global outbreak and climate disasters.
“The reason we are doing quite a lot and the reason why this hub became the largest one in the world is exactly because of its strategic position,” Saba says. Two-thirds of the world’s population reside in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and you can serve them with a few hours’ flight from DC.
The WHO supplies for Damascus were still not being shipped as of Wednesday night because of a problem with the plane’s engine. The organization is trying to get flights to the airport that is owned and operated by the Assad government in Aleppo, says the leader of the organization.
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in today’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, CNN’s three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. You can sign up here.
The politics that have divided Syria for over a decade may make victims of the earthquake hostages, analysts warn.
“Among the tens of thousands of victims of the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, hundreds of children are languishing in hospitals and shelters without their families and homes,” read a statement issued by the group.
“It’s a crisis within a crisis,” says Leena Zahra, a Syrian American and humanitarian worker focused on increasing mental health access to globally displaced people. “This tragedy will impact children, entire families, some that have been displaced over 20 times. They have already faced psychological impact, so it is just going to be adding on.
Turkey is a NATO member whose international stature has only grown in recent years. 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.
The Syrian regime is shunned by most Western countries. But leader Bashar al-Assad has begun forging ties with former enemies as regional states welcome him back into the fold. Last year, the United Arab Emirates welcomed Assad in Abu Dhabi, and last month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the pair may soon meet for peace talks.
The world gave us a chance to face the criminal, Bashar al-Assad. But this is a natural disaster,” said Ibahim Bakkour, a local council member. We need help in a humanitarian situation and there’s no political argument here.
Seventy countries and 14 international organizations have offered Turkey relief following the quake, Erdogan said on Tuesday, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the UAE, Israel and Russia.
Activists and observers worry that the regime will hamper timely aid to many earthquake victims in rebel-held areas, most of whom are women and children.
But years of conflict and an acute humanitarian crisis mean there are extra difficulties in helping survivors in Syria, where international aid has been slow to arrive.
Madevi Sun-Suon, a UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) spokeswoman, told CNN that they’re interested in all avenues to reach people in need. The road issue is a big challenge as of now, but we have aid.
Sherwan Qasem, spokesperson with Doctors without Borders, said access to the area had been restricted by the cross-border mechanism, agreed by the UN Security Council resolution in 2014 to allow aid to cross four places on the Turkey-Syria border.
But the Syrian government says it needs more – and has called for sanctions placed on the country to be lifted. A number of countries have imposed embargoes on trade with Syria.
The UN appointed human rights expert called for the lifting of sanctions against Syria in November saying they are causing more destruction and trauma.
“It would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now – gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering that they have endured,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told a media briefing on Monday.
The regime is making that argument because if sanctions are dropped the situation in the Middle East would greatly change.
Saudi Arabia and the Emirate of the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Egypt end a boycott of Qatar in January 2021
Iran is protecting its military assets from potential air strikes by Israel by building another underground base, and in May the army gave details about it.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday he was ready to restart stalled negotiations over Sweden’s application to join NATO as soon as Turkey was, Reuters reported.
NATO membership applications from Turkey, as well as those of others, have not yet been approved, in part because Turkey has not agreed on how to vote in a unanimous manner. 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.
Why it matters: The three nations last year reached an agreement on a way forward, but Ankara suspended talks last month as tensions rose following protests in Stockholm, where a far-right politician burned a copy of the Quran. Turkey goes to the polls in May.
Why it matters: The move 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 happened after the emir and king of Kuwait attended an Arab summit in Abu Dhabi.
Background: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt ended a three-year political and economic boycott of Qatar in January 2021. There have been no bilateral discussions since then 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
Comment on ‘Quranic Twitter Accounts of the Irregular Prophet” by N. Musk and the UN’s Sustained Twitter Account
Before the account was taken down, it had more than 13 million followers.
One user addressed Musk, saying: “I don’t think it violated the Twitter rules because its tweets are quoted from the Holy Quran. We demand the lifting of the suspension of this account.”
Some users were not upset with the suspension. The account uses incomplete Quranic verses that are taken out of context and therefore change the meaning of the text, as decried by some.
The account owner seems to run sister accounts in French, English and German that post translations of Quranic verse. The sister account which shows Quranic videos is campaigning to have the original account 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 only humanitarian aid corridor between Turkey and Syria is the Bab Al Hawa crossing and the United Nations said Thursday’s convoy was made up of six trucks.
There was no aid at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing for a period of three days, according to the administration in charge of the only access point between the two countries.
The UN said before the earthquake that roads to the crossing were blocked but by Wednesday they were clear, which raised doubts as to why it was taking so long.
The effects of the quake on the humanitarian situation in the region of Idlib: A nurse’s story unfolded as a protest in Turkey
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.
Protesters are holding up signs asking why bodies are being allowed through. The bodies of Syrian refugees who got safe haven in Turkey are being sent back to their homeland to be buried.
He is living out of his car in Gaziantep, Turkey, while he is in contact with colleagues in Syria. Hospitals there have been overwhelmed with bodies and staff are waiting for families to identify them so they can be taken away.
Local authorities say 11,000 families in the rebel-held part of Syria are now homeless after the quake. Up to 2,000 deaths have been reported and thousands more injured, according to the United Nations.
Russia and China used their veto power to reduce the number of crossing from four to one. Less than one month before the earthquake, the UN unanimously decided to keep it open, a vote which the ambassador from Russia said enabled aid to flow to a Syrian enclave which was “inundated with terrorists.”
“We don’t need the politics. The game doesn’t need to be played. What we do need is for the international community to focus on the border crossing staying open,” Barnes added. Now, we’re past the first phase of finding people, and we’re moving into the humanitarian phase. People need to have shelter, food, and water.
The number of people who were in need of humanitarian assistance before the earthquake stood at 15.3 million – but that number will now have to be revised, UN Resident Coordinator for Syria, 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.
The director of a US-based organization said that those who are still alive may die in the cold weather.
The tragedy of a child and a girl killed in Syria: Emergency aid and humanitarian assistance for a community in the Aleppo province
So far, several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Russia, have sent relief to regime-controlled airports. Other countries have also pledged aid.
The disaster is being used as a tool to remove sanctions, according to the executive director of Deir Ezzor 24, an organization that delivers news from Syria. We can bring aid to Syria if we want to. Time is critical. We are playing with life and death.”
The roads in Turkey are stuck because of the trucks that bring everything from excavators to food and blankets to the earthquake disaster zone. Thousands of tons of aid have come in from around the world. The arrival of special equipment to detect those still trapped under the rubble means that — days after the earthquake — lives are still being saved.
Meanwhile, “Syrians don’t know where their next meal comes from. When we say meal, it’s not about vegetables, not about meat… it’s about simple bread,” said Moutaz Adham, Oxfam’s country director for Syria.
The crowd chants “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for God is Great. Civil defense groups and volunteers save a boy from the rubble in 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.
On Wednesday NPR was able to reach kelih. He spoke from Jinderes, a part of Syria’s Aleppo province that’s under opposition control. He said countless buildings there have collapsed. People are in the streets in the freezing cold, waiting for aid to arrive. The buildings were made unlivable by the aftershocks.
Humanitarian aid and international aid didn’t arrive in the region until 72 hours after the earthquake, he said, describing the little help that is being trickled in as a haphazard grassroots effort.
Civil defense groups are using poorly equipped rescue efforts, and civilians are assisting them. “Everyone’s waiting for international rescue and aid just to be able to process what’s 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.
The challenge is amplified due to the fact that the affected areas in Turkey and Syria are facing colder than normal temperatures. The low in the city of Aleppo through this weekend is forecast to be -2C, which is less cold than the February low of 2.5C.
Families who have lost their homes are receiving help from governments around the world, which includes deployment of search teams, medical teams and equipment.
Investigating fraud in charitable organizations: Check check with the Internal Revenue Service to see if an organization has been knowingly giving a tax-deductible contribution
Before you make a donation, especially to a lesser-known organization, you should do some research to make sure it is reputable. Sites like Charity Navigator and Guidestar grade nonprofits based on transparency and effectiveness. The Internal Revenue Service also allows you to search its database to find out whether an organization is eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.
If you suspect an organization of committing fraud, you can file a report with the Justice Department’s National Center for Disaster Fraud.
Global Giving, which helps local nonprofit agencies, is collecting donations to help fund emergency medical workers’ ability to provide food, shelter and medicine, among other necessities. As needs in Turkey and Syria change, the organization will focus on long-term assistance, it said.
The Disaster Response Emergency Fund is being asked for donations in order to provide immediate cash assistance.
OXFAM, an international organization that fights poverty, is working with a women’s cooperative in Turkey to determine an appropriate immediate and long-term response plan. It is accepting donations.
CARE, an organization that works with impoverished communities, is accepting donations that will go toward food, shelter and hygiene kits, among other items.
The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, which since 2012 has provided medical relief and health care services inside Syria and to Syrian refugees in Turkey, is collecting money.
The death of Mohammed Juma in Jinderis, Syria : Hundreds of bodies killed by falling debris during the 2011 eruption of the Darfur terror attack
JINDERIS, Syria — Mohammed Juma sleeps on the heap of rubble that crushed his family as he survived. The young man and others in this town burn things they found in the debris to heat their homes.
The screams of people trapped under the rubble were heard by residents of Jinderis, but they lacked the right machinery and equipment to save them.
Mohammed Juma said his wife and two children, who were 20 and 6 months old, were alive when their home collapsed on top of them. The effort was futile as Juma and his neighbors pulled at the shattered concrete.
The Syrian civil defense teams are using only a small number of excavators. On Friday morning in Jinderis, at least 850 bodies had been pulled from the rubble. Tabakh was killed by falling debris after he cradled his toddler in his bed. Tabakh’s wife died in the same room as him. He said that few of his friends could come because they were too busy with their own burials.
They have been left with nothing after years of war. There is a lack of basic services in the makeshift tents that are set up in the olive groves because the mud is too heavy for the children to play outside.
Less than one hour’s drive from one of the open border crossings, the town of Sawran has no running water. On the other side of the street is the Turki family’s home, which has been destroyed and where nine people, including five children died. A group of people were killed 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 northwest of the country, which in the past has been heavily damaged by aerial bombardment during the civil war, was largely responsible for the casualties, the UN estimates have claimed 300,000 lives since 2011.
The White Helmets told CNN on Saturday that the death toll was going to rise much higher after their search and rescue operations ended.
Syrian earthquake survivors who are still trapped in the rubble: I am afraid I cannot sleep, but I can tell you what I am going through,” Palestinian Red Crescent chief executive officer Dov Maisel told CNN
Operations were suspended early on Saturday due to an “increasingly difficult security situation,” AFDRU said in a statement, adding there was “increasing aggression between groups in Turkey.” Austrian army spokesman Michael Bauer said teams had resumed operations late in the day.
Israeli search-and-rescue group United Hatzalah also announced Sunday that it was leaving Turkey after six days on the ground due to a “significant security threat.”
United Hatzalah chief executive Eli Pollack and vice president of operations Dov Maisel said in a statement they had “received intelligence of a concrete and immediate threat on the Israeli delegation and we have to put the security of our personnel first.”
“We knew that there was a certain level of risk in sending our team to this area of Turkey, which is close to the Syrian border but we took the necessary steps in order to mitigate the threat for the sake of our lifesaving mission,” Maisel said.
The rescue dog handler is helping Turkish workers once again, with the help of Turkish forces who are in the search areas.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday that it was the first group to send a team to provide mental health support to earthquake victims in Syrian shelters.
“Difficult times have been experienced by children since the earthquake. Some of them miraculously escaped death, but after their physical survival, psychological support teams of the Palestinian Red Crescent are working for their psychological survival,” the statement continued.
He says the voice messages he received chronicle their pain and make it impossible to sleep. Haunted by their cries, he lies awake tormented by guilt. He is worried that thousands of his friends are still buried under rubble in Syria.
“It’s destroying me,” Al-Dahhan, 31, told CNN. I received a lot of voice messages, and some of them were crying, saying people were dying around them. I can not stop listening to them.
The nonprofit, which Al Ghraowi says “seeks to empower Syrian refugee youth and families nationally and internationally through access to innovative education, community-driven aid and skill development,” has raised more than $49,000 for earthquake relief.
The workers who survived have been racing against time to help the survivors who are still trapped under the rubble.
In his voice, Al-Dahhan says that he has not been properly eaten and cannot sleep for more than ten minutes at a time.
“At least I get a little bit of relief, knowing what I’m doing matters, because the more I can fundraise here, the more it helps out there,” he said. I need to keep going because I am stressed out by not doing enough. I feel guilty when I sleep. I need to be awake every second. There is a need to be working. I want to get more updates. I feel like I’m operating here, but my mind and soul are there.”
Donations and Relief for Syrians in the Aftermath of a Mass Earthquake: What Do Syrians Really Need or Want to Help?
A family lost their two sisters in the earthquake and left their children orphans. When their brother learned of his sisters’ deaths, Al-Dahhan says, he suffered a heart attack from the shock and died – also leaving his children fatherless.
“My mind started racing and I thought it was an Israeli airstrike since we have had a few of those in Latakia over the past few years,” Alsamman told CNN. “When I saw the reports of a massive earthquake in the middle of the night, I began to wish it had only been an airstrike.”
He spent the next hours in agony, he said, watching images of death and devastation pour into his phone with no way of knowing if his friends or family were trapped under the rubble.
The only organizations that could provide aid for them were the ones that were already there, Al-Dahhan said.
As the clock ticked, the opportunity to rescue survivors decreased, igniting panicked efforts from Syrians in the US like Alsamman and Al-Dahhan to raise as much money as possible for organizations on the ground.
Nour Al Ghraowi came to New York City from Damascus, Syria in the middle of the civil war that started there.
Even though the world has been quieter, there are organizations and people that are still fighting for them, who never stopped fighting for them.
Zahra emphasized the urgency of donations to provide immediate needs, including food, shelter, non-food items, and medicine, but said providing Syrians with mental-health care is also critical.
She says that the feeling of being abandoned and forgotten is one of the reasons why Syrians have mental health issues.
“It’s only natural to have that reinforcement of asking themselves, ‘Do I matter as much or will I be forgotten again?’” she added. “‘Will I just be another statistic or another undignified picture that is circulated but not humanized?’”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/us/syrian-american-earthquake-raise-money-rescue-relief/index.html
Buildings toppled during the First World War II: Syrian civilians in the streets and at the front lines of the news-feeding crisis
Some, including Al-Dahhan, have experienced psychological triggers, including photos and videos of buildings toppling during the earthquake, scenes nearly identical to the aftermath of airstrikes that have killed and displaced thousands during the war.
Years ago I built walls because the war messed me up. Al-Dahhan wanted to avoid getting hurt like that again. “But with this earthquake, I feel those walls crumbling. I am remembering things I don’t want to remember, and I can’t think of anything else.
Others, like Zahra and Alsamman, say they are struggling with survivor’s guilt, possessed with a relentless, sinking feeling that no matter how much they help it won’t be enough.
“I can certainly say, without a doubt, as Syrians, we don’t have time to almost mourn or process our grief because we’re trying to use energy, time, resources, all hours of the day, to keep Syria in the news, keep Syria in conversation,” Zahra said.
We do not have time to heal these wounds, we are shouting from the rooftops, please help, please help, please help.
Children and families are killed every hour, and survivors are still alive in the streets, holding on to diminishing hope.
Across the street, workers searched for bodies in the rubble, their hopes of finding survivors dimming so long after the building fell. Ms. Omac, 38, said she had relatives under the debris: a niece and nephew of her husband. She was waiting for the rescuers to pull their relatives out, alive or dead.
Turkey’s national emergency management agency, AFAD, has distributed a huge quantity of tents — with the help of more than 238,000 relief workers — but the sheer scale of the disaster has meant many still lack shelter.
Many people cobbled debris together to erect what they could: One family, numbering about a dozen, built a shelter of cardboard and tarp over a flatbed truck, with blankets and thin mattresses in the beds.
Turkish news media reported a shortage of temporary housing for the homeless, and the Turkish Red Crescent said it would be speeding up the production of tents to house people.
United Nations Humanitarian Efforts to Survive the 2010 Eleventh Earthquake, a Statement by Griffiths
The focus was moving to provide homes, food, schools and psychological care to the victims of the earthquake, as the window for rescue was coming to a close, said Martin Griffiths, the top humanitarian chief at the United Nations.