Medair News UK 10/2014

MEDAIR | newsNo. 3 | 2014 | medair.org

Through the eyes of a child IRAQ: EMERGENCY RESPONSETHE PHILIPPINES: WHEN IRIS DREAMS

S A V I N G L I V E S I N C H A D

3 I R A Q Emergency response in Iraq

4 C R I S I S B R I E F I N G A child's survival

6 S Y R I A N C R I S I S Through the eyes of a child

1 0 M I D D L E E A S T Lives are in the balance

Institutional Funding Partners: Iraq: ERIKS Development PartnerMadagascar: Swiss Solidarity, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Agence de l’eau Rhône Méditerrannée Corse, EC Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation-Europe AidPhilippines: ERIKS Development Partner, Tearfund BE, Swiss Solidarity, and EO MetterdaadSouth Sudan: EC Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection, EO Metterdaad, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Swiss Solidarity, South Sudan Common Humanitarian Fund, US Agency for International Development, US State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and MigrationSyrian Crisis: ERIKS Development Partner, Tearfund UK, EC Directorate-General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, UN Refugee Agency, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Food Programme, EO Metterdaad

Sources: 1. UN Inter-Agency Group. Levels and Trends in Child Mortality, Report 2013. 2. UNICEF. 2014. Malnutrition Statistics. Retrieved August 2014 from data.unicef.org/nutrition/malnutrition 3. UNICEF. 2009. Tracking Progress on Child and Maternal Nutrition. 4. WHO. 2013. Immunization Week 2013 Campaign Essentials 5. UNICEF. 2014. Diarrhoea Statistics. Retrieved August 2014 from data.unicef.org/child-health/diarrhoeal-disease 6. UNICEF. 2014. Malaria Statistics. Retrieved August 2014 from data.unicef.org/child-health/malaria 7. UNICEF. 2014. Under-Five Mortality. Retrieved September 2014 from data.unicef.org/child-mortality/under-five

A C H I L D ’ S L I F E

M E D A I R U KUnit 3 Taylors Yard67 Alderbrook RoadLONDON, SW12 8ADTel: 020 8772 [email protected]

Cover Photo: Children living through hard times in Somalia. © Medair / Kate Holt. All photos © Medair except: page 3: © Medair / Stella Chetham; page 5: © Medair / Marie-Claude Daoust; page 6: © Medair / Megan Fraga; page 7 © Medair / Wendy van Amerongen; page 8 © Medair / Miguel Samper; page 12: © Medair / Fabienne Ray. Charity registered in England and Wales no. 1056731 Limited Company registered in England and Wales no. 3213889The paper used in this publication is made using 100% ECF pulp from a sustainable source and is 100% recyclable.

It is one of the saddest sights on this planet. It makes our stomachs sick

and our hearts ache. It makes us angry. It makes us weep. It weighs on

us like a heavy burden. It motivates us to act.

A child in suffering is one of life’s harshest experiences.

As I write this, children in Syria and Iraq are experiencing violence, horror and

death on a scale which is hard to fathom and which no child should ever have to

experience. Our teams are there on the ground working with the victims of these

tragedies.

We know, in crisis, the innocent often suffer the most. The vulnerable situations

these children are placed in (being forced to flee, deprived of care, witnessing

the horrors of war) don’t just affect them in the days ahead but can often leave a

devastating footprint on them for the rest of their lives.

And that’s what motivates us to provide, to preserve and to protect these young lives.

It is only because of your loyal support, that thousands of children can eat again,

drink, sleep indoors and be cared for. That they can gradually learn to live again, to

rebuild and to dream.

Together, we will continue…wherever necessary.

Alex Day Director, Medair UK

We don’t know if the people at home are alive or dead. The militants attacked our village with heavy guns. We left without even shoes on our feet. We walked for seven hours to reach the mountain.

We stayed on the mountain for nine days. Our phones died and we couldn’t contact anyone to get help or find out what was going on. We had no food, water, or blankets—our blankets were the rocks. For the first few days we ate crackers and hard bread and we had a little water, but the food soon ran out. We were drinking water from bottle caps to make it last. Many of the children got sick and some died because they had no water.

In the Kurdistan region of Iraq, everyone has to have food stamps, but we left ours at home. Even the clothes we are wearing now were all donated by local people, because our clothes were ripped and dirty after being on the mountain.

We are wondering how we will eat, cook, shower. We need privacy. We are worrying about the future.

Since we left home we have not seen the people that we love. We pray to God that we can see them again.

— As told to a Medair relief worker by an Iraqi family in Zakho

For the latest updates on this emergency response, visit medair.org/iraqcrisis

Emergency response in Iraq

Intense fighting in northern Iraq sent thousands of families on the run with their children this summer, fleeing for their lives, persecuted for religious and ethnic reasons.

Medair sent in two teams with urgently needed relief items, and we were one of the first to reach families in Zakho, bringing them emergency food rations and essential survival supplies. The stories they told us were like nightmares:

Young girls take refuge in Zakho.

I R A Q

A child’s survival

Is there anyone more vulnerable than a young child? When natural disasters strike and conflicts rage, children are the ones whose lives are most at risk. Their growing bodies suffer without food and proper nutrients. Their fragile immune systems succumb more rapidly to disease. They are vulnerable to abuse and neglect—not yet strong enough to defend themselves or provide for their own well-being.

TODAY, MORE THAN 17,000 YOUNG CHILDREN WILL DIE... Although child mortality has fallen sharply in recent years, 6.3 million children under five still die every year, mostly from preventable causes and treatable diseases.

NEARLY HALF OF ALL DEATHS IN CHILDREN UNDER FIVE ARE LINKED TO UNDERNUTRITION (45 %). Malnutrition robs children of their health and strength, impairs their brains, and snatches away their potential before they ever have a chance.

BREASTFEEDING IS THE BEST WAY TO SAVE INFANT LIVES. If started early and done exclusively for the first six months and continued with complementary food until the child is two, breastfeeding would singlehandedly slash child mortality rates by 19 %—saving the life of one in five children who would have died.

IMMUNISATIONS WOULD PREVENT NEARLY ONE IN FIVE CHILD DEATHS (17 %). Deadly diseases like measles spread like wildfire among children, yet one dose of vaccine protects children for life. Medair vaccinated 185,000 people in 2013.

MOSQUITO NETS AND MALARIA MEDICINE HELP PREVENT DEATH FROM MALARIA (7 % of all child deaths).

SAFE DRINKING WATER AND GOOD HYGIENE HELP PREVENT DIARRHOEAL DISEASE (9 % of all child deaths).

ESSENTIAL SHELTER ITEMS

NUTRITIOUS FOOD + MALNUTRITION

TREATMENT

SHELTER THAT PROTECTS AGAINST THE ELEMENTS

CARE FOR INFANTS AND PREGNANT/

LACTATING WOMEN

BASIC HYGIENE PRACTICES THAT

SAVE LIVES

EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT

PRIMARY HEALTH CARE + MEDICINES

SAFE DRINKING WATER

VACCINATIONS AGAINST DISEASES

SANITARY LATRINES WITH DOORS THAT LOCK

C H I L D R E N I N C R I S I S

N E E D S U P P O R T T O S U R V I V E

Medair’s Child Protection Policy sets out a clear framework of minimum expectations for all Medair staff in order to help protect children from abuse, exploitation, and negligence.

C R I S I S B R I E F I N G

4 Medair | October 2014 | medair.org

Children in crisis grow up too fast. They see traumatic events unfold, they suffer because of scarce resources, they carry the early burden of an adult’s responsibility. Children need the freedom to still act like children. A child’s life is more than just survival; it’s about playing, learning, and dreaming. These are the formative experiences that shape a child for life.

When you see children in crisis, it’s tempting to look on with pity and think, ‘Oh, those poor kids.’ And it’s true—those kids are suffering through a lot and they need support at this vulnerable time in their lives. Yet those kids are more than just ‘victims’—they are children, full of wonder, smiles, and playfulness. They are children who persevere in the face of hardship; they are children who are hurting and sick and scared. Every child is different, each one. They need our support, not our pity—just as our own children need support in times of crisis.

— Anne Reitsema, South Sudan Country Director

A child’s life

medair.org | October 2014 | Medair 5

Water sources close to home mean that children don’t spend all their free time gathering water.

Health care, safe water, and good hygiene mean that children lose fewer school days due to illness.

Sturdy disaster-resilient homes in disaster zones mean children sleep better with protection from future storms.

Safe drinking water in schools means children have more time and motivation to attend school and receive an education.

Latrines in schools with locks, especially for girls, mean that students have privacy and safety and have their dignity protected.

Child-focused teaching treats children with respect and makes a greater impact in their lives and on their families.

C H I L D R E N I N C R I S I S

N E E D F R E E T I M E , D I G N I T Y, P R O T E C T I O N , A N D R E A S O N T O H O P E

In cyclone-prone Madagascar, Medair reaches thousands of children every year with fun learning activities about good hygiene and how to prepare for future storms. We present puppet shows and informative movie nights in remote villages and we have distributed a specially designed comic book and board game to schools.

C R I S I S B R I E F I N G

Through the eyes of a child

Khitam is a 10-year-old girl who loves school, misses her father, and lives in a tent in a foreign country—one of more than one million Syrian children 11 or younger who have fled the fighting in Syria.

“We used to be happy. My home was very beautiful. It had two colours, white and black, and six rooms. My sisters and I had a bedroom. Now we all sleep in the same tent. I miss my red bed a lot. The colour red is my favourite.”

Khitam fled with her family to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, but her father stayed behind in Syria. The Bekaa has become home to more than 400,000 refugees living in more than 1,100 informal settlements set up on flood-prone farmers’ fields.

“My youngest sister screams a lot while she sleeps. She screams, ‘War planes!’ I wake her up, and tell her everything is okay, that here there aren’t any planes so she shouldn’t be scared. We fled to Lebanon because of the war planes and shooting—we were so scared.”

Young Syrians like Khitam are arriving in the Bekaa traumatised and then crowding into the tents of relatives or friends until their families can set up a shelter of their own. Medair gives shelter kits and essential items to newly arriving and vulnerable families so they can build weather-resistant structures where their children can sleep safely, protected from the elements.

“I don’t have any toys, so I pretend that the pillows are pets. In Syria I used to have a cat. She was really beautiful. She was a yellow and white one. I cried a lot when they shot her. She was running outside and then got shot. I wasn’t allowed to go outside to save her.’’

Khitam misses her father more than anything. “I have only talked to my father once since coming to Lebanon. He says he can’t come here because there is a lot of shooting, so he can’t travel around. When I

meet my dad after the war, I’ll say to him: ‘What took you so long? We missed you so much! Thank God, now we are all together, and you are fine.’”

Children are especially vulnerable to contracting diseases in crowded refugee settlements. Undernourishment, sickness, the cold and damp weather, and flooding in the tented settlements present real threats to the lives of Syria’s refugee children. But the thing that frightens Khitam the most is the thought that her home back in Syria may no longer exist.

“Our neighbour’s house has been totally destroyed. We only have this one home. If it’s destroyed, we can’t go back. We would have no place to stay. I hope things settle down so I can go back home. I want my school to be repaired. But mostly I want to meet my dad again.”

Medair provides safe, warm, and dry shelter to children taking refuge in the Bekaa Valley.

Khitam, 10, longs to meet her father again.

S Y R I A N C R I S I S


Helping children in a time of hunger

Terrible fighting began a year ago in South Sudan, forcing hundreds of thousands of families to flee their homes. Markets were destroyed. Crops that traditionally feed the country weren’t planted. Food had been scarce even before the conflict started; soon the food was all but gone.

To escape the violence, more than 30,000 people fled into the swamps in Panyijar County, a safe haven from the violence, yet one that was extremely short on food. Families survived by eating leaves and water lilies. Cases of severe malnutrition skyrocketed.

“A lot of times my children have to go to bed with an empty stomach when I don’t have anything to feed them,” said Nyantut, mother of six. “Sometimes all the children are crying—it makes me mad. You want the best for your children, and it really hurts.”

Medair began running a life-saving nutrition programme in Panyijar that admitted more than 1,000 malnourished children in the first month alone. “We are working night and day,” said Medair’s Peter Manyang. “There is so much need in this environment, people are literally starving and families sometimes have to choose who gets the food and who doesn't. Parents are scared to lose all of their children.”

Medair provided nutritious food supplements and related treatments that rapidly restored health and energy to thousands of malnourished children.

“The impact this has on my life is big,” said Nyamuot, mother to Malam, a boy who had been severely malnourished. “I’m expecting a little one and if Medair had not helped Malam, I think he might have died. I was feeling very down and helpless. Now I have renewed hope. It’s amazing that Medair comes out to this place, surrounded by swamps and in a very remote area.”

“We have been able to help a lot of families, and people are slowly getting their hope back,” said Peter. “At first I saw apathy and hopelessness, and now I see happy, healthy, smiling faces.”

In just over four months, Medair screened 8,000 children and treated 3,000 for malnutrition in Panyijar County. In August, Medair handed over the programme to a partner organisation. We continue to give life-saving nutrition services in other areas of South Sudan facing severe nutrition needs.

Your gift will nourish children in South Sudan and help restore them to health and vitality.

Bajour, 15 months, severely malnourished

Bajour, just four weeks later

Nyamuot holds her boy, Malam, at the clinic.

S O U T H S U D A N


When Iris dreams

Iris didn’t get home from work until the day after the typhoon struck. At 17 years old, she had just graduated from high school and was working at a part-time job out of town, earning income for college to become a high school teacher.

Typhoon Haiyan changed everything. When Iris returned home, she was shocked to find that her mother, father, and brother had all died in the family home, crushed by a fallen tree. Only her two younger brothers, ages 14 and 10, had survived.

In that moment, Iris became both an orphan and the head of her household. She knew she had to support Steven and Philip Paul, but she had no source of income other than her small wage. Her house was so damaged she didn’t have anywhere for them to sleep.

Their uncle came to help, along with older sisters Ailene and Arlene who lived in other cities with children of their own. Together they salvaged enough of the old house to set up a small one-room shelter where everyone could sleep.

“I need to take care of my siblings,” said Iris. The best way to do that, she decided, was to get a better-paying job. So Iris moved four hours away to work at a bakery and sent her earnings back home. Yet she grew lonely being so far away from her brothers, so she returned to Dulag and reunited with her family.

Haunted by the loss of her parents and brother, Iris continued dreaming about them at night. She dreamed she heard them crying out for help. Living where they had died made it hard to escape those dreams.

When Medair heard about Iris and her brothers, we made sure they received one of 600 typhoon-resilient homes the team was building in Dulag. We built Iris and her brothers a house right beside their grandparents, away from the old house and the sadness that seeing it brought.

Iris and her brothers transformed their house into a home. When we visited them a few months later,

photos of family and friends adorned the walls and Iris could not contain her smile. “We are excited and very happy to have somewhere more spacious to live,” she said.

Iris continues to look for a job close to home so that she can stay near her brothers. She is keen for them to finish their education, and she still dreams of going to college herself. She hopes to study music and literature and become a high school teacher. At the moment she is learning to play the guitar, even though she doesn’t have one of her own to practice on.

It’s touching to see too how much the community has rallied around them, helping out with food provisions and generally keeping an eye out for their well-being. “Thank you so much for sparing this extra house for Iris and her brothers,” said a village official.

“These children were a priority for us,” said Medair’s Jayson Tupaz. “That’s why we are so happy now that they have a house.”

Since Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013, Medair has helped around 60,000 people like Iris and her brothers get back on their feet. Thanks to you, we have built 600 sturdy core homes and we aim to build or repair another 2,280 by the end of 2015.

T H E P H I L I P P I N E S


When you see photos of children

in crisis zones, you mostly see

sad images of children suffering.

Yet time and again, Medair

meets exuberant children

who are laughing and playing

despite living through dangerous

situations. It’s important that

we see children in crisis as

something other than helpless

victims. They are unique,

creative, joyful, scared, excited,

sad, silly, and playful, each in his

or her own way. They are kids

being kids, as only kids can be.

Cars and planes made of mud and water bottles—ingenious!

K I D S B E I N G K I D S

Like Hiba, thousands of Syrian and Iraqi childrenhave no safe place to survive this winter.Shelter a child. Build a future.

Text EYES14 £10 to 70070 to donate £10

Donate between17 November and 31 December, and your gift will be doubled — for free.


FLEEING THE VIOLENCEThree million Syrians have now fled their country for their lives. Iraq has erupted in terrible violence, sending 850,000 Iraqis fleeing into the Kurdistan region of Iraq in the past year alone.

While these wars rage on, children are caught in the crossfire. More than half of Syria's refugees are children. You see them everywhere you turn in refugee sites in Lebanon and Jordan and Iraq's Kurdistan region. These children left behind their homes, schools, friends, and relatives to live in a place where they are safe from conflict but lack access to safe shelter, education, health care, and many of the essentials of childhood.

DREAMING OF HOME They miss their lives back home. Achmed, in Lebanon, misses swimming, so he swims in the narrow water tanks at his camp. Lina, in Iraq, misses her toys and books. Fatima, in Jordan, misses her house, which she saw burning with her own eyes.

These children dream of what they left behind, and have nightmares of what they have seen. They have known more fear and loss than anyone should bear, let alone a child.

SURVIVING THE WINTERNow they must prepare for a freezing cold winter that claimed the lives of children in Lebanon last year. Newly arriving children urgently need a safe and warm place to live.

These children need your help. It’s no stretch to say that lives are in the balance. From 17th November until 31st

December — or until our “pledge pot” is empty — every gift you make will be doubled for free. Please give them the foundation they need to survive and begin to recover. We’ll be in touch in the coming weeks with details of how to give. Or simply visit medair.org/x2 for more details.

We made it here.

We’re safe

from the fighting.

But now what?

£17can provide essential hygiene

items for a Syrian refugee family

£44can provide three blankets, pillows

and mattresses for a displaced family in northern Iraq to keep them warm

£83can provide tool kits

for two Syrian families to make shelter improvements

Hiba fled with her family into the Kurdistan region of Iraq to escape attacks in her home village.

With your gift, here are some examples of what we can do and, for a limited time, your gift will have twice the impact:

In May, an outbreak of cholera was declared in Juba, South Sudan’s capital city. Cholera is highly contagious and extremely dangerous in urban settings. At the request of the Ministry of Health, Medair agreed to support the local hospital and within 48 hours, an emergency cholera treatment centre was set up. For the next two months (and up to 122 patients per day), 1,400 people were treated for cholera—including Moses, the child you see here.

Moses was brought in by his mother, severely dehydrated and lethargic. I remember it was really busy at the time. An IV line was put into the boy immediately and then I attended other patients. I was shocked when I turned literally 15 minutes later to see Moses sitting straight up, smiling, laughing, and playing with his IV line.

What touched me the most was his mother, who had been crying in silence just moments before. Now she couldn’t help herself from laughing along with her baby. Not all cases are as spectacular as this one, but it was truly amazing and encouraging.

I want you to know that YOUR gifts make this kind of life-saving work possible. It is only through private donations like yours that we develop the flexibility to respond to emergencies quickly wherever the need is greatest. On behalf of Moses and his mother and 1,400 grateful people whom your gifts helped during this South Sudan crisis —THANK YOU!

— Fabienne Ray, Medair Cholera Treatment Centre Manager

Give children the chance they deserve. Give today at medair.org

Thank you from South Sudan!

MN

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Moses and his mother, smiling and laughing just minutes after arriving at the clinic in tears.

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Medair News UK 10/2014