The world lost one of its greatest literary voices and most popular celebrities on April 17, 2014, with the death of Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In his 87 years of life, Marquez touched the hearts and lives of individual readers around the world, and is renowned for his poignant words and heartbreaking characters. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
Marquez’s anthology of works is all-encompassing. He wrote novels, short stories, screenplays and poetry. The most famous of his texts are “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” The genre of magical realism is what it is today because of his foundational and groundbreaking approach to it as a writing style.
Arguably his most groundbreaking narrative, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” speaks to the realities of many impoverished or rural communities across the developing world. In it, he creates the fictional village of Macondo, and follows its various trials and tribulations through the span of several generations, such as death, disease and abuse. Underlying these problems though, is his constant tone of hope and love, which are even more accurate realities of such communities.
Beyond his specific works, he is remarkable as a writer in general for the position from which he writes. Having grown up and spent the majority of his life living and working in developing nations of South America, he is what can be called a post-colonial writer. That is, his writing seeks to validate the voices and experiences of the inhabitants of regions of the world still reeling from colonialism.
Such countries tend to have large populations of socially repressed communities, historically silenced because of their low economic, racial or cultural status. Writers and activists, such as Marquez, are vital to opposing and subverting the disadvantageous system that continues to subjugate.
He is a constant testament to the power of love, friendship and the inherent beauty of life. He never ceases to affirm the life of the individuals he writes:
1. “Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.”
2. “The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.”
3. “Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but…life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
4. “A true friend is the one who holds your hand and touches your heart.”
5. “There is always something left to love.”
6. “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”
7. “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
8. “Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
9. “Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom.”
10. “I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.”
These quotes give us not only a glimpse into Marquez’s mind and soul, but also into the incredible beauty of life for all of us. He reminds us to never take anything or anyone in life for granted, and that we are always in control of our own happiness. These are messages valuable to all of us, regardless of our socioeconomic status.
– Stefanie Doucette
Sources: Thought Catalogue, Philly Enternatinment, New York Times, BBC
Photo: srednja
10 Facts about Foreign Aid From the United States
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was created on November 3, 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. Prior to the creation of USAID, there were many foreign assistance organizations that already existed. However, with the birth of USAID came the collaboration of all other foreign assistance programs under one common goal. This was the first time in history that a single agency was given the responsibility to cover of foreign economic development.
Here are 10 facts you may not have known about foreign aid from the United States:
1. U.S. foreign aid was shaped to serve two purposes. First, to improve lives in developing worlds by implementing ways to improve global health, further education, advance food security and much more. As stated by USAID.gov, “USAID carries out U.S. foreign policy by promoting broad-scale human progress at the same time it expands stable, free societies, creates markets and trade partners for the United States, and fosters good will abroad.”
2. In 2012, Afghanistan remained the top recipient of U.S. economic and military assistance for the fifth year in a row. Prior to that, Iraq held the top spot from 2003-2007.
3. Foreign aid from the United States is made up of a combination of obligations as well as disbursements. An obligation is a binding agreement that could have immediate results or some in the future. A disbursement is the actual amount paid by federal agencies by cash or cash equivalent during the fiscal year to meet the obligations set.
4. Though a country can rank in the list of top ten recipients based on obligations, there is no guarantee that they will receive the full disbursement. That was the case for Haiti and Columbia in 2011 that ranked in the top ten recipients by obligation but did not receive that amount in disbursements.
5. Less than one percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign assistance.
6. Foreign aid falls under discretionary spending of a whopping $1.258 trillion dollars in 2013.
7. The five primary agencies providing economic assistance include: the U.S. Department of State, USAID, the Department of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Services. These five agencies account for 93 percent of total economic assistance.
8. Sub-Saharan Africa received the largest share of economic assistance at 25 percent with twenty countries receiving over $100 million in economic assistance.
9. Almost half of U.S. foreign assistance goes to six countries that are Washington’s allies in the campaigns against terror and drug trafficking.
10. U.S. foundations amount to about $1.5 billion a year in international giving.
— Janelle Mills
Sources: USAID, USAID, Greenbook, Foreign Assistance, Reuters
Photo: Seattle Times
The History of UN Peacekeeping
The United Nations began during the 1940s and progressed through the height of the Cold War. The United Nations was coined by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was also the first to use the Declaration of the United Nations during World War II. Consequently, the end of the Cold War changed the United Nations forever. Since then thousands of UN member from 120 countries have been working together in UN peacekeeping operations.
The first operation was known as the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). This operation was the first deployed to keep problems from escalating within the Middle East. Also, the UNTSO monitors ceasefire and peacekeeping within Arab and Jewish citizens in Jerusalem. Accordingly, the UN’s peace keeping stretches across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic.
The second deployed UN unit was the Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) which oversees the ceasefire in Jammu protecting India and Pakistan from dispute and to resolve fights that break out to due conflict over land.
The first UN peacekeeping involved military force, but now the backbone of the United Nations peacekeeping include everything from administration and economist to police officers to human right’s monitors and humanitarian workers.
After the Cold War, the peacekeeping operations increased immensely. In fact, from the years 1989-1994, the United Nation’s security council authorized peacekeeping operations, rising the number from 11,000 to 75,000.
Currently, The United Nations is leading 16 peacekeeping missions and 1 special mission in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the UNTSO and UNMOGIP are still in progress today. Therefore, leading other peacekeeping missions, like the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFI) which was created to keep peace between Israel and Lebanon should come as no surprise. This is especially the case since, during the 1970s, Israel invaded Lebanon over heated border control issues causing the United Nations to move in to restore peace.
Not only does the United Nations work in the Middle East but also in areas of Africa, Europe, as well as Haiti to help insure safety for humanitarians and civilians.
The United State is a top contributor to help fund the United Nations followed by: Japan, France, Germany, United Kingdom, China, Italy, Russian, Canada and Spain. These nations all work together to fund these operations in order to keep peace in all areas of the world.
The United Nations continues to work to keep peace in areas with high security risks for the people who travel to and live in those areas. This indeed benefits all countries, especially the specific extra border security in those countries that are at risk.
– Rachel Cannon
Sources: Forward, United Nations
Photo: The Gaurdian
Jakarta as an Emerging Global City
A.T. Kearney, a United States-based consulting firm, ranked Jakarta, Indonesia’s bustling capital, whose metropolitan area contains roughly 30 million people, as the next Southeast Asian leading city. The Javanese city boasts first among a list of 34 cities in low-income and middle-income countries that will most likely become a global leader in fields ranging from business activity to workforce health and security. The methodology used involves 26 metrics in five categories: business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience and political engagement.
Certainly, Jakarta’s status as the capital of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) contributes greatly to the city’s rising position. Furthermore, the emergence of the ASEAN Economic Community, a quasi-European Union style economic community minus a common currency due to take off in 2015, is also another factor that helps to make Jakarta an up-and-coming Southeast Asian city.
Jakarta, over the past few years, has invested immensely in improving its once inadequate infrastructure. However, it is the city’s improvements in other fields such as stability and security that has put it on the map. Areas involving Jakarta’s population such as income equality, stability, healthcare cost, minimum wage and security are those that have fared the best.
Jakarta’s improvements also extend to the fields of information exchange and high gross domestic product growth rate. In terms of the city’s once feeble infrastructure, today’s Jakarta has been developing its mass rapid transit system. Its groundbreaking ceremony was held in late 2013. This project will begin operating in 2017-2018 and it will help to facilitate the daily commute of the residents of the city and its surrounding areas.
Furthermore, Bangkok, Thailand, its future appearing promising in 2008, has been experiencing instability for the past few years, thus eliminating Jakarta’s regional competitor. John Kurtz, A.T. Kearney’s Asia-Pacific head, stated that the city’s growing political and economic importance is attracting both domestic and international talents and investments.
The city’s rise in importance and prosperity is certainly a stunning achievement. The city’s transformation into the region’s powerhouse is undoubtedly a testament to development as a tangible and a feasible process, not just an illusive rhetoric.
– Peewara Sapsuwan
Sources: The Jakarta Globe, Wall Street Journal
Photo: Luxury Real Estate Blog
10 Quotes From Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The world lost one of its greatest literary voices and most popular celebrities on April 17, 2014, with the death of Colombian writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In his 87 years of life, Marquez touched the hearts and lives of individual readers around the world, and is renowned for his poignant words and heartbreaking characters. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
Marquez’s anthology of works is all-encompassing. He wrote novels, short stories, screenplays and poetry. The most famous of his texts are “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” The genre of magical realism is what it is today because of his foundational and groundbreaking approach to it as a writing style.
Arguably his most groundbreaking narrative, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” speaks to the realities of many impoverished or rural communities across the developing world. In it, he creates the fictional village of Macondo, and follows its various trials and tribulations through the span of several generations, such as death, disease and abuse. Underlying these problems though, is his constant tone of hope and love, which are even more accurate realities of such communities.
Beyond his specific works, he is remarkable as a writer in general for the position from which he writes. Having grown up and spent the majority of his life living and working in developing nations of South America, he is what can be called a post-colonial writer. That is, his writing seeks to validate the voices and experiences of the inhabitants of regions of the world still reeling from colonialism.
Such countries tend to have large populations of socially repressed communities, historically silenced because of their low economic, racial or cultural status. Writers and activists, such as Marquez, are vital to opposing and subverting the disadvantageous system that continues to subjugate.
He is a constant testament to the power of love, friendship and the inherent beauty of life. He never ceases to affirm the life of the individuals he writes:
1. “Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.”
2. “The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.”
3. “Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but…life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
4. “A true friend is the one who holds your hand and touches your heart.”
5. “There is always something left to love.”
6. “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”
7. “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
8. “Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
9. “Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom.”
10. “I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.”
These quotes give us not only a glimpse into Marquez’s mind and soul, but also into the incredible beauty of life for all of us. He reminds us to never take anything or anyone in life for granted, and that we are always in control of our own happiness. These are messages valuable to all of us, regardless of our socioeconomic status.
– Stefanie Doucette
Sources: Thought Catalogue, Philly Enternatinment, New York Times, BBC
Photo: srednja
Top 5 Countries in Need of Better Healthcare
The World’s Health Organization (WHO) ranked the world’s health systems in the year 2000. WHO ranked Liberia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Myanmar as the top 5 countries in need of better healthcare and as the nations with the lowest healthcare quality. While these nations have undergone reforms since the 2000 assessment, they continue to face critical healthcare obstacles. The countries are listed in descending order based on the World’s Health Organization Ranking of the World’s Health Systems.
Top 5 Countries in Need of Better Healthcare
1. Liberia
According to Doctors Without Borders, Liberians suffer from epidemic disease, social violence and healthcare exclusion. During the past twelve years, Liberia’s Ministry of Health has taken steps to address healthcare issues but disease and access to adequate healthcare remain crucial issues in the country. In March 2014, the media announced an outbreak of the Ebola virus in Liberia, suggesting epidemic disease continues to be a primary healthcare concern. Liberian health authorities expressed a concern over the virus spreading to other countries while attempting to quell public panic. Furthermore, access to sufficient healthcare and healthcare equipment remains limited. In a 2012 Korle-Bu Neuroscience Foundation report, Jocelyne Lapointe stated that Liberia has only one medical center, John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center (JFKH), with up-to-date medical imaging systems. JFKH has a modern CT scanner, ultrasound and x-ray equipment. However, the hospital does not have adequate staffing to install and operate all the imaging equipment and desperately seeks the aid of radiologists.
2. Nigeria
Nigeria also suffers from epidemic diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and typhoid which affect a large portion of the population. The lack of government aid in response to these diseases has led to distrust in government healthcare initiatives. The Guardian’s September 2013 article, “The toughest job in Nigerian healthcare,” Dr. Ado Jimada Gana Muhammad, the chief executive of Nigeria’s National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, stated, “If customers – I call patients ‘customers’ – attend a health facility and the level of care is not what he or she expects the confidence is eroded even further.” Muhammad strives to reinstate Nigerians’ lost trust in the healthcare system, hoping that the public will become consumers of recent additions to the system, including better access to vaccinations and new distribution of resources. In April 2014, Nigeria’s National Health Bill will attempt to revitalize the country’s healthcare system via a $380 million pledge. The bill will focus on primary healthcare, offering free healthcare to many Nigerians.
3. Democratic Republic of the Congo
A 2013 IRIN News article, “Boost for healthcare in DRC,” stated, “Civil war has destroyed much of the country’s health infrastructure, as well as the road networks and vital services such as electricity, meaning patients often have to travel long distances to health centers that may not be equipped to handle their complications.” In a country with high rates of infant/maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, malaria and sexual violence, access to medical care plays an essential role in the success of the country’s healthcare system. Currently, a British program, providing $179 million to the country, is attempting to help six million people in the Congo access healthcare.
4. Central African Republic
Lack of healthcare access and healthcare workers plague Central African Republic. After a 2010 rebel attack, volunteer medical workers fled dangerous regions of the country. Thus, large portions of the country’s population have been cut off from all medical resources. Furthermore, an IRIN News article, “Central African Republic: Struggling for healthcare,” states, “Since 2008, the government has spent only 1.5% of GDP on public health, hence its dependency on some 19 medical NGOs to provide drugs and medical equipment and improve the skills of health workers.” For the people of Central African Republic, health care depends on NGO’s rather than the government and therefore, when NGO workers do not feel safe in the country, the healthcare system suffers drastically. IRIN news also noted that vaccination coverage dropped with NGO displacement. The government needs to increase healthcare funding or increase safety measures for medical volunteers to improve the ailing healthcare system.
5. Myanmar
Despite Myanmar’s history of wealth via international trade, Myanmar’s economy has changed significantly in recent years. Poor road infrastructure and low government contribution to healthcare systems has led to healthcare inaccessibility for a large portion of the nation’s population. According to the Burnet Institute, an organization that conducts research on public health in Myanmar, the country has high rates of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. Ten percent of the population suffers from HIV and tuberculosis simultaneously. Myanmar needs more government funding and outside support from other nations to establish an effective healthcare system and build access to healthcare centers.
– Jaclyn Ambrecht
Sources: Think Africa Press, Burnet Institute, Doctors Without Borders, IRIN News, IRIN News, KBNF, The Guardian, The Inquirer, WHO
Photo: International Rescue Committee
Turquoise Mountain Arts
When a country is in turmoil, the arts can be the first thing to go. Fortunately for Afghanistan, Turquoise Mountain Arts is reviving traditional Afghan arts, architecture and crafts.
Turquoise Mountain Arts is an institute that seeks to bring back traditional Afghan art by training artisans in four schools: calligraphy and miniature painting, woodwork, jewelry and ceramics.
Historically, Afghanistan was an important cultural center for a variety of Islamic arts that have unfortunately fallen to the wayside under the various conflicts that have disrupted life in the country. Traditionally, the Afghan arts and crafts industry is a source of pride and a respectable way for a person to make a living.
Turquoise Mountain Arts helps the Afghan community in more ways than preserving traditional art forms. Since the institute was fully established in 2006, nearly 1.5 million dollars of traditional Afghan crafts have been sold, with that money going back to Afghan artisans.
When the institute turns a profit, it reinvests in itself, putting the money back toward artisans and students so that they can continue to learn and produce art. Additionally, the different arts practiced at Turquoise Mountain Arts help keep valuable natural resources, such as wood, precious stones and metals within the country. The institute also “provides education and employment for over 400 students, teachers, engineers, architects, and construction workers.”
The heads of each of the individual colleges are all Afghan citizens, and whenever there is an opening for new professors, representatives from the institute head straight to Kabul’s craft district.
Before Turquoise Mountain opened, there were no schools focused on preserving and teaching traditional art in Afghanistan. However, since its founding, smaller schools and programs have opened up throughout the country.
The apprenticeship style program is highly beneficial for artisans, who are taught for three years before going out on their own, and are given internationally recognized “City and Guilds” accreditation upon graduation.
Graduates also receive support as they go into the craft market to start their own businesses and further preserve cultural heritage by transferring their knowledge to new workers.
With growing national recognition in addition to international markets in Canada, Britain and Arab countries like Qatar, Turquoise Mountain Arts Institute is helping to preserve Afghan culture and art, and provide respectable employment for citizens.
– Cameron Barney
Sources: Turquoise Mountain Arts, Islamic Arts
‘Victory’ in Tunisia
On January 26, 2014, the national assembly of Tunisia passed a new constitution that created a full democracy in the country. The constitution was the first in the Arab world to provide full equality for men and women.
Article 20 guarantees male and female citizens equal rights and equal treatment before the law. Article 45 of the constitution requires the state to protect women against violence and guarantee equal presentation of men and women in elected institutions.
Ms. Lobna Jeribi, a member of the Ettakattol party, described the article as “a revolution in itself. It’s a big, historic step, not only for Tunisian women”.
But has this new constitution truly given women their rights? Will women be seen equal by the law after the passing of this constitution?
In September 2012, Meriem Ben Mohamed was out with her fiancé in Tunis, the capital city of Tunisia. Two policemen took turns raping her in a police car, while her fiancé was forced by a third policeman to hand over cash money.
On March 31st, the three policemen were convicted in a Tunis courtroom. The two men who raped her were given seven years in prison, while the third policeman was convicted of extortion and was given a two-year sentence.
However, Ben Mohamed’s road to justice was long and full of obstacles. When she first accused the policemen of sexual assault, the Tunisian security services charged her with “public indecency”. After public outcry, the president of Tunisia, Mocef Marzouki, gave her an official apology.
The policemen denied the charges of rape and accused Ben Mohamed of seducing them on that night. During the trial, medical evidence was presented, which demonstrated that Ben Mohamed was sexually active before the policemen raped her.
In Arab countries, sexual activity before marriage is taboo. Instead of focusing the attention upon the perpetrators, much criticism during the trial was launched towards Ben Mohamed herself, in a standard case of victim blaming.
Ben Mohamed currently lives in France and has described her ordeal in a published book called “Guilty of Being Raped”. When she walked out of the courtroom, Ben Mohamed shouted, “when I demand justice, they insult me”.
In Tunisia, the maximum jail term for rape is 25 years. Because the policemen were only given seven years in prison, Ben Mohamed’s legal team will appeal for a longer sentence.
Ben Mohamed’s case demonstrates the fierce opposition Tunisian women face in day-to-day life. Despite the newly adopted Tunisian constitution that guarantees women protection against violence and equal rights before the law, there is still a long road before women can walk the streets of Tunis, unafraid.
– Sarah Yan
Sources: The Economist, BBC, Iol
Central African Republic Peacekeeping Efforts
With violence in the Central African Republic continuing, and complaints of little effectiveness towards the forces from the West coming in, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on April 10 to send in 12,000 peacekeeping troops.
Currently France is holding its 2,000 peacekeeping troops in the nation until the UN force is ready. The hope is that this influx will bring some stability to a struggling nation torn by religious and ethnic violence.
Help from neighboring African nations has been offered, and there are currently 5,000 African Union troops in the nation. However, troops from Chad were recalled earlier in April as reports spread that they were shooting civilians in the capital of Bangui.
Reports like those of the Chadian peacekeepers are troubling and continue to raise questions over who incoming peacekeepers should support. When the efforts began at the end of 2013, the concern was over Muslim militia killing Christians in the region. However, once the peacekeepers came in, retaliatory killings by Christian “anti-balaka” militia resulted in migrations by Muslims and perilous refugee camps set up in the capital of Bangui.
To the credit of the United Nations, they appear to be taking a pro-active response to these complaints. The arrival of more troops meets a pressing need as there had been many complaints over the lack of troops and their reluctance to enter the more dangerous regions of the nation. Hopefully a troop influx will meet victims’ needs.
In the weeks before the vote by the UNSC violence appeared to be escalating in the region. In the days before the vote at least 30 people died in attacks by the anti-balaka militia. UN estimates that were published in the lead-up to the vote estimated that a quarter of the population was “in desperate need of aid.”
The violence in the Central African Republic has gotten little of the media attention that conflicts in Ukraine and Syria have gotten, yet it is a burgeoning problem in a region of growing importance. The peacekeeping announcement is a step in the right direction for the international community. Organizations like the Borgen Project advocate for assistance in regions of turmoil like the Central African Republic is currently dealing with.
While this mission may be meant to encourage peace in the region, it may be some time before that goal is achieved. The work in nations like the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows how difficult that peace efforts in out-of-the way posts are for the West. The efforts will be monitored and followed by the members of the Borgen Project, in the hope that the citizens of the CAR will live better lives soon.
-Eric Gustafsson
Sources: The Week, Reuters, New York Times
Photo: ISN
Food Crisis in South Sudan Escalates
South Sudan urgently needs $230 million in international aid in less than 60 days, the United Nations Humanitarian Aid Coordinator in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, forewarned. Without the international food aid, South Sudan may face a fate similar to Ethiopia’s famine in the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands died.
“We’re in a race against time,” said the U.N. coordinator Lanzer to journalists in Geneva. According to The New York Times, Lanzer had only one message to world leaders: “Invest now or pay later.”
With 3.7 million people on the brink of starvation in South Sudan, the U.N. now ranks its food crisis equivalent to Syria’s current predicament. Lanzer appealed for the most critical needs, such as food, water, seeds and farming tools, so that the South Sudanese will be able to plant the seeds before the start of the rainy season in late May.
“I am angry because we don’t have food to eat,” Nyadang told The New York Times. The mother of five does not object to the war itself, as her own brother was killed in Juba, capital of South Sudan, where government troops have been linked to civilian arrests and massacres.
Leaders of U.N. humanitarian aid agencies estimate that close to 255,000 South Sudanese have escaped to nearby countries, approximately 76,000 people sought refuge at U.N. bases across the nation and over 800,000 were driven away from their homes by the hostility that exploded in mid-December of 2013, when South Sudan President Salva Kiir claimed his former vice president, Riek Machar, attempted to overthrow the government.
“The (U.N) is seeking $1.27 billion for South Sudan for 2014, but received only $385 million in the first quarter of 2014, less even than in the equivalent period of 2013,” reported The New York Times.
“Already over one million people have been displaced and are in dire need of humanitarian assistance,” wrote David Crawford, Oxfam’s Acting Country Director for South Sudan, on the Oxfam website.
South Sudan is rich with oil, but also one of the world’s poorest nations. She became independent from Sudan in 2011. In spite of the peace deal after 20 years of civil war, the remaining grievances were not adequately dealt with. Abdul Mohammed, an African Union official told CS Monitor that the roots of conflict lay in South Sudan’s inability to unify the various ethnic groups in its nation building efforts.
In addition, those from the south have a deep-seated resentment over the lack of development in their poverty stricken region and blamed the northern Sudan government for taking their oil money.
While this is the first time South Sudan will face a major food crisis, Lanzer noted that the internal conflict has wreaked substantial harm on its already unstable and agriculture-based economy, drastically affected trade and slashed the production of oil down by 50 percent.
“The hostilities need to cease to give people the confidence to tend their land,” he added.
António Guterres, head of the U.N. refugee agency, visited west Ethiopia, where 90,000 South Sudanese fled to escape the violence. He told The New York Times, “The physical and psychological condition of these people is shocking. This is a tragedy I had hoped I would not see again.”
– Flora Khoo
Sources: New York Times 1, New York Times 2, Oxfam, CS Monitor, MLive
Photo: United Nations
Letters of Encouragement Between Refugee Children
“You are not alone, we are with you,” Somali students in the Dadaab refugee camp remind Syrian refugee children in Jordan through an encouraging video made by CARE International.
February of 2014 Care organized a pen pal exchange between Somali and Syrian refugee students, creating hope and messages of solidarity for the children.
According to CARE Kenya employee Mary Muia, Many of the children at the Dadaab refugee camp have been there since birth and know no different than to be a refugee.
Dadaab refugee students have endured refugee life and hold on to hope through the education and support they have received through organizations like CARE International. The Dadaab refugee camp is the largest refugee camp in the world today, with over 423,496 refugees as of April 2013.
Letters Syrian children received from Dadaab refugees included a picture of the student who wrote the letter. These letters all shared common themes of working hard in school and helping one another. One Dadaab student offered several points of advice to his Syrian pen pal, including, “be patient, respect your leaders, and work hard.” Many of the students began their letters with “Dear brother or sister,” and ended with “we are praying for Peace in Syria.”
According to CARE International, “more than 2.5 million people have fled the three-year conflict in Syria.” The Dadaab refugee students understand these children’s experience and the hardship that comes from being a refugee.
Syrian children will write back to their Dadaab pen pals and hopefully maintain relationships with one another thanks to Care International’s work with both refugee camps.
In his letter, Dahir Mohamed wrote, “Be the stars and new presidents of Syria.” Abshir Hussein wrote, “Try to start a new life which is better than before,” and Zahra Dahir Ali reminds her pen pal “without education, it is like you are in a dark place.”
CARE interviews with Syrian refugees revealed that one out of ten families expressed need for support to “cope with the experience of conflict, flight, and displacement.” There is great power and hope that comes from a simple, “you are not alone in this.” Messages of solidarity from those who understand what it means to be a refugee are not only comforting but also empowering to Syrian children.
As Bill Bailey once said, “without unity, we are victims.” With education, community, and belief in hope, the refugees at Dadaab are refusing to be victims and encouraging Syrian children to do the same.
– Heather Klosterman
Sources: CARE (1), BBC, The Huffington Post, CARE (2)
Photo: Murray Moerman