World Humanitarian Day: 5 crises and how you can help

On Aug. 19, 2003, a cement mixer filled with explosives slammed into the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 17 people, including the top UN envoy to the country, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The tragedy underscored the persistent danger of humanitarian aid work in conflict zones, and prompted the UN to begin annually marking Aug. 19 as “World Humanitarian Day.” 

Today, as the UN marks the 10th anniversary of the Baghdad bombing, Iraq remains the site of persistent civil conflict – bombings killed more than 1,000 people in July, the bloodiest monthly total in five years. And a host of alarming new humanitarian crises have risen to join it. From the grinding civil war in Syria to Somalia’s persistent failures of nature and government, many places in the world have been marred this year by violence, political instability, and natural disaster.

Here are five of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in 2013 – and what you can do to help. 

Syria

Sharif Karim/Reuters/File
Syrian refugee children play at a camp in Terbol in the Bekaa Valley, July 31, 2013. At a camp in Terbol, refugees beseech visiting aid workers to improve sanitation and other services at the site.

The scope of the human rights crisis in war-ravaged Syria has no parallel. More than 90,000 people have been killed since fighting began between supporters of President Bashar al-Assad and rebel fighters in 2011, and the pace is not abating – there are now 5,000 people dying every month, according to UN refugee agency estimates.

The agency recently announced that 6.8 million Syrians – out of a population of just 20 million – are currently in need of humanitarian assistance, nearly half of them children. Some 4 million people can no longer meet their basic food needs.

What’s more, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres declared last month that the world had "not seen a refugee outflow escalate at such a frightening rate since the Rwandan genocide” in 1994.  There are now nearly 1.8 million Syrian refugees, most of them crammed into camps in border regions of Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. The UN says that with 6,000 people fleeing every day, the total number of refugees will hit 3.5 million by year’s end. Another 4.2 million people are displaced inside the country.

As UN aid chief Valerie Amos declared last month, in Syria “the world is not only watching the destruction of a country but also of its people.”

To help:

Mr. Assad’s regime has severely restricted the flow of aid money and organizations into the country. However, a small number of groups are still operating there, with many more pouring resources into efforts to assist refugees on the border. Prominent among them are the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), which allows donors to specifically earmark funds for their medical aid work in Syria. 

1 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.