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Abstract
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It's been three weeks since southern Turkey and northwest Syria were devastated by earthquakes, starting on 6 February. More than 50,000 people have died, 70,000 are injured and at least 160,000 buildings have totally or partially collapsed.
United Nations organizations and other aid agencies have joined thousands of volunteers in both countries. The World Food Programme is delivering millions of hot meals. The World Health Organization (WHO) is supplying hospitals with painkillers and antibiotics. The World Bank has pledged nearly US$1.8 billion for recovery and reconstruction, and UN secretary-general António Guterres is appealing for $1 billion for Turkey and close to $400 million for Syria, to be distributed to organizations providing food, shelter and education. Separately, the Red Cross/Red Crescent has launched an appeal to raise around $700 million.
Turkey's government has pledged to rebuild homes within a year. But there's no such help (and much less other assistance) across the border in northwest Syria, where the earthquake killed more than 4,500 people, injured 8,500, demolished around 10,000 buildings and left some 11,000 people homeless. Northwest Syria's inhabitants have no unified government. They're trapped in a war, a legacy of a 2011 revolution -- part of the Arab Spring -- that was suppressed by the government of President Bashar al-Assad in a military operation backed by Russia. The region is also effectively isolated; there are only three (temporary) crossing points for supplies to reach people along Syria's 900-kilometre border with Turkey.
Even before the earthquakes, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that more than half of northwest Syria's 4.7 million people are internally displaced, and around 70% of those are living in temporary accommodation (often in tented cities). More than three million do not have enough to eat and one-third are disabled, many because of the war. Health-care facilities have been targeted, leaving only 66 hospitals still functioning, but poorly equipped, amid an ongoing cholera outbreak...
Language: en |