The World Humanitarian Day (www.worldhumanitarianday.org), is celebrated every August 19 since it was declared by the United Nations in 2003 and serves as a tribute to all humanitarian workers who face dangerous situations to help others.
The FPSC joins this celebration and thanks especially their work to all our colleagues on the field since without them the foundation couldn’t implement its humanitarian aid projects in Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza and the Ivory Coast. (www.fundacionfpsc.org/ayudahumanitaria/en).
For this reason, we attach some reflections received from our Head of Mission in Amman (Jordan),
“How does it feel to know, for real, that someone, a family member of one of our volunteers in the refugee camp where we work, will be executed by an armed group, sometime this morning, after being tortured the night before because they don´t want to join them? Or that a man traveled yesterday to the camp from Irbid to ask for help (apologizing for bothering us …) because his friend’s daughters, a 10-year old little girl and her 10-month old baby sister, are alone at the border, without any protection, because they do not let them in? (neighbouring countries are overwhelmed).
Or to attend meeting after meeting with the various humanitarian actors to decide how to prioritize cases, because there are not enough funds to provide the minimum necessary for the survival of all? How to prioritize? Who goes first? Attending to cases of children with Cerebral Palsy, first? Or the ones with Spina Bifida? and so one after another playing God because there is not enought funds? But, which humanitarian crisis to prioritize? Syrian? Ethiopian? Yemeni? Palestinians? Myanmar´s Rohingya? Burundian? Malian? from Central African Republic? and so on, a terrifying and endless list…
This is a reality that these people go through every day. A relative, a neighbour, a friend, a teacher from the school, someone they love has died, someone’s village has been bombed, someone’s little child has been killed by government forces or by another armed actor… Civilians are the target in their own homes (with new technologies they know it minute by minute in the distance). A constant anxiety for their loved ones, this is the reality of refugees in the camps, in the lands of nowhere trying to escape from death, in the boats throughout the Mediterranean Sea, in the European or Australian or North American etc. detention centres and so on.
In the meantime, the ones that can change this by demanding their governments to help them, are simply on holiday?
I have no answer for this feeling, a lump in the throat, burning in the chest that prevents you breathing properly.
Please, dear friends, pressure your governments to grant asylum to these people, pressure them to finish at once this horror, not with bombs, but with development.
Press them to respect Human Rights and the International Human Rights Conventions they have signed in your country´s name, in your name… Press them to fight against inequality that is the source of all hatred and wars, press, press, you are their voices, think of your loved ones, in your children and ask to your own selves what would you do if you were in their situation… (María López de Haro. Head of Mission, FPSC Jordan. 14/08/2015).”