Wednesday 30 September 2015

Red Cross says conflict in Syria and Iraq causing 'alarming' $82m hole in finances

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) urgently needs funds to cover an unprecedented budget shortfall caused by the conflict in Syria and Iraq, a senior official said, warning that unless needs are met in the region, more refugees will make the hazardous journey to Europe.
Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s regional director for the Middle East, said the funding gap for operations in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon reached “the alarming figure” of 80m Swiss francs ($82m) for 2015 in late September.
“Humanitarian response is a sticking plaster, but this sticking plaster is indispensable in Syria, Iraq and the neighbouring countries today. Normally at this time of the year our activities in major war zones are fully funded. This year they are not,” Mardini said.
However, he remained hopeful that donors would step up and that the gap could be filled by the end of the year. He said there had been “positive signals” from the UK and other European governments.
The finances of the world’s oldest humanitarian organisation act as a microcosm for a global humanitarian system straining under the weight of multiple crises, at a time when national budgets in many countries are being squeezed by austerity measures. Even when funding levels are higher, they may fail to meet global needs.
“Paradoxically, 2015 is the year where we got the strongest support from some of our own donors – and yet we have the biggest deficit ever,” Mardini said.
The ICRC estimated it required a field budget for this year of $1.65bn, a record for the organisation, which needs more than $123m in cash flow every month to sustain operations. Its field budget has grown by nearly 50% in the last five years.
If the funding gap is not plugged, the ICRC has reserve funds of $308m but Mardini said it hoped to avoid using this money, which is often drawn on for operations when crises break.
Mardini said the ICRC, working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, has “substantially improved” its access in Syria over the past month and had been able to double the number of operations carried out across frontlines over the past year.
But while these developments were positive, he painted a grim picture of a country where the economy and infrastructure are crumbling. The situation is particularly dire in besieged towns, like Moaddamiyah in rural Damascus, which the ICRC has visited several times.
“We were shocked to see that people there had not had electricity for two years. People were eating grass, people were drinking water from the swamps … We were able to help them, but it’s not a one-off. We need to be able to go back there,” Mardini said.
“In areas controlled by the Islamic State group, we have very limited access. We were able, however, to operate on an ad hoc basis through interactions at the administrative level of this group,” he said, citing the delivery of crutches and medical equipment to Al-Bab and water projects in Raqqa.
In Syria, 12 million people need humanitarian aid, with half a million living in besieged areas. The ICRC provides clean water for 5 million people, delivers food and also provides health services – and Mardini placed this work in the context of trying to offer people an alternative to risky journeys to Europe.
“When you develop and offer public services to the population, you can give them options to stay. There are other parameters in the mix, but at least it can help people to decide to stay because the default position for people is to stay close to their homes,” Mardini said.
“Ordinary Syrians, ordinary Iraqis have one wish: to be back in their country and to have a decent, normal life,” he said. “The best way to address this problem is to have it fixed in the countries of origin and this is a combination of political work that needs to be done, but also … this sticking plaster that is humanitarian aid.”
Mardini made an impassioned plea for all parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law, stressing that the absence of a sustainable political solution made these rules more essential than ever. “International humanitarian law is not just ink on paper. It can actually work if respected and it will alleviate the human suffering,” he said.
Increasingly, aid workers are being caught up in the many conflicts around the world: two ICRC staff were shot dead this month while travelling in a convoy in Yemen. The group temporarily suspended travel for its teams in the country, but hopes to resume full operations soon, Mardini said.
Asked about the increasingly bitter political debates over refugees in Europe, Mardini said the fact that millions of Syrians had found shelter in Lebanon and Jordan was a remarkable example of the absorption capacity of countries.
“In Lebanon, you have more than 1.1 million refugees in a country of 4 million. It’s 25% of the population in a country that could hardly recover from its own civil war … It is coping … At the end of the day, 200,000 or 400,000 refugees in Europe … is something that, in absolute terms, can be manageable,” he said, adding that the crisis might also spur more decisive political action.
“This is a stark reminder for the international community that there is an unsolved problem over there that people were ready to forget … Maybe it has to be seen as an opportunity for bolder political decisions going towards a more sustainable solution [rather than] just funding humanitarian organisations.”

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