13 July 2015 – Syrian children are becoming increasingly vulnerable to water borne illnesses amid peaking summer temperatures and dwindling supplies of safe water, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned today.
“The situation is alarming particularly for children who are susceptible to water borne diseases,” Hanaa Singer, UNICEF’s Representative in Syria reported in a press release. “With the crisis now in its fifth year, water has become even more scarce and unsafe, and poor hygiene conditions especially among the displaced communities are putting more children at severe risk.”
Since the beginning of 2015, said the UN agency, Syria has reported 105,886 cases of acute diarrhoea while also registering a sharp increase of Hepatitis A cases.
The situation is particularly dramatic in Deir-Ez-Zour, a city not far from Syria’s border with Iraq, where raw sewage has reportedly contaminated the Euphrates River from which the local population receives its water. As a result, UNICEF added, some 1,144 of typhoid cases have been reported.
“Since the beginning of the crisis, we’ve been working with a range of partners to support the vital water infrastructure on which some 15 million people in Syria depend,” Ms. Singer continued. “This includes drilling and equipping wells as alternative sources of water as well as supporting the local production and procurement of water treatment supplies.”
The conditions in Syria have steadily been deteriorating since the outbreak of the country’s conflict in March 2011.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has cautioned that some 12 million people in the Middle Eastern country today remain in need of humanitarian assistance – a twelve-fold increase since 2011. 7.6 million people have been displaced by the conflict and another 4.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in hard to reach and besieged locations.
The humanitarian impact of the crisis is only further compounded by funding shortfalls which has seen wholesale cuts to the UN’s delivery of humanitarian aid – from food assistance to lifesaving health services.
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9 July 2015 – The exodus spawned by the four-year long Syrian conflict has now become the United Nations refugee agency’s largest crisis in almost a quarter of a century and risks deteriorating even further as fighting in the country shows no sign of abating.
In a news release issued earlier today, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirmed the latest figures received from the field indicating that more than 4 million Syrian refugees have fled the Middle Eastern nation since hostilities began there in March 2011.
“This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation,” lamented UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “It is a population that deserves the support of the world but is instead living in dire conditions and sinking deeper into abject poverty.”
As it reaches the mid-point of its fifth year, the Syrian civil war has generated a steady outflow of refugees into neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, burdening those countries’ infrastructures and leading to overcrowded settlements where many refugees struggle amid high unemployment and precarious services.
According to the latest data available, Turkey alone is host to over 1,800,000 registered Syrian refugees – more than any other in the world – with about 259,000 living in 23 camps set up and managed by the Government.
In addition, the numbers are only slated to increase amid intensified fighting across Syria, the UN refugee agency noted. Today’s 4 million milestone, in fact, comes barely 10 months since the total of three million was reached.
At the same time, however, life for Syrians in exile is becoming increasingly tough. The UN agency explained that some 86 per cent of refugees outside Jordanian resettlement camps live below the poverty line. In Lebanon, 55 per cent of refugees live in shelters considered to be “sub-standard.”
Meanwhile, in a recent report from the ground, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) similarly warned that as the Syrian crisis has dramatically reduced family livelihood opportunities and impoverished millions of households in the region, children have been steadily pushed into the job market and are now being widely employed in harmful working conditions, risking serious damage to their health and wellbeing.
“Worsening conditions are driving growing numbers towards Europe and further afield, but the overwhelming majority remain in the region,” Mr. Guterres continued. “We cannot afford to let them and the communities hosting them slide further into desperation.”
While the conflict continues to push a steady outflow of Syrians across the region, the conditions of those trapped inside the country’s besieged cities remains equally dire.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has cautioned that some 12 million people in the Middle Eastern country today remain in need of humanitarian assistance – a twelve-fold increase since 2011. 7.6 million people have been displaced by the conflict and another 4.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in hard to reach and besieged locations.
The humanitarian impact of the crisis is only further compounded by funding shortfalls which has seen wholesale cuts to the UN’s delivery of humanitarian aid – from food assistance to lifesaving health services.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT GAIN’S WORK IN SYRIA, CLICK HERE.
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