Topic: Crisis Response

Twenty plus years in the international aid business and I’ve never been in a situation like this before. The normal words – tragic, heart wrenching, outrageous – seem superficial.

Sandra Azmy, Women’s Rights Program Initiative Manager at CARE Egypt, talks about the situation of Syrian refugees in Egypt, gender-based violence and how psychosocial activities can help start the healing process.

Heba is a beautiful young woman in her late twenties. A blue head scarf with flowers frames her soft face and her fierce light brown eyes, coloured with eyeliner and mascara. She wears light jeans and a long blue dress. It is when she lifts her shirt and tucks up her pants that you realise what this woman has gone through. Her stomach, arms and legs are covered in pockmarks. Heba is tall and her voice is strong and loud when she talks about how her body was riddled by a dozen bullets.

Welcome to Azraq. Jordan’s soon-to-be largest refugee camp is in its final stages of being built. The new camp will provide vital life-saving assistance and protection to an initial 51,000 refugees. The site could be expanded to support 130,000 refugees in total if needed.

BENTIU, South Sudan – “It is still tense here after last week’s heavy fighting, but there is some movement in the streets. The situation of the displaced people who are sheltering inside the UN compound is complicated by the sheer numbers of people seeking safety, the weather and uncertainty.

BENTIU, South Sudan – CARE’s daily routine in Bentiu, South Sudan was interrupted by fighting this week, but project coordinator Rose Ejuru found plenty to do. She immediately changed roles, reverting to her medical training as a nurse to help tend several hundred patients who flowed into the clinic located inside the town’s UN compound.

CARE International in Uganda is reaching out to the most vulnerable in the emergency response following the influx of thousands of South Sudanese Refugees into northern Uganda. CARE is providing shelters, each built with a latrine, to persons with special needs living in the Rhino Refugee Settlement

When I was a child my grandmother used to tell me how she felt when she was forced to flee to Syria from her home in Palestine in 1948. She hoped for her children and her grandchildren to never have to experience what it feels like to be a refugee. But we still did. My family is one of hundreds of thousands of families who fled from Palestine decades ago, and who have – three generations – still a refugee status in Syria.

A new report on the humanitarian situation in South Sudan warns that the safety and food security of nearly 7 million people will deteriorate rapidly without a swift, international response.