Tag Archives: Syria
Syrian families are running out of food
The issue
The United Nations announced yesterday it will have to cut down on food aid to Syrian families in need because of a lack and delay of funding from donor countries. It is estimated that half of the Syrian population currently needs humanitarian aid for survival and that 6 million persons are internally displaced.
Last January 15, relief agencies organized a second “Pledging Conference” under the auspices of the UN to rally financial support for the worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria. The donor countries initially pledged US$ 2.3 billion at the conference which took place in Kuwait, however, UN officials claim that they have received only 1.1 billion so far.
As a result, the standard food basket for a family of five, which is composed of rice, bulgar wheat, sugar, salt and wheat flour, has now been cut by 20 percent in March, according to officials from the World Food Programme (WFP).
UNHCR also claims that it has experienced delays in donor pledges to Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. The agency expressed concerns over worsening economic and security conditions in many refugee camps.
Why should you care? Or more practically, how does this affect you?
- Aside from the obvious ethical reasons, many ordinary Syrian citizens might die of hunger – especially when war, conflict, and political violence traps innocent bystanders and strips them of their livelihoods. So, maybe we could all gain to help the hungry and the helpless – whether they are in our immediate circle or not – and make the world a better place (a somewhat better place).
- The more civilians suffer from conflict, the more likely they are to turn to violence as a survival strategy. It’s no secret that economic hardships, unemployment, and deprivation breeds violence and instability (and turns ordinary individuals into terrorists or extremists). The more innocent Syrians suffer, in and outside of Syria, the more likely the conflict will endure and radicalize the rest of the region. Accordingly, neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Turkey have already witnessed spillover effects from the civil war in Syria. The international community does not stand to benefit from an increasing volatile and turbulent Middle East, which may – or may not – develop hostile attitudes towards the US, Russia and the European Union.
- The increasing economic pressures on Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries, as illustrated by the head of UNHCR, pushes refugees to flee to developed countries in search of better opportunities. Sweden, the U.K., Norway and other European countries have already received waves of resettlement requests from Syrian nationals. If these requests are accepted, it will add further economic pressure on European economies.
What you can do
- Donate! So you make sure that the funds get directly distributed to the beneficiaries. You can either make a monthly or a single contribution to UNHCR or the WFP. Your contributions will provide a number of Syrian families with drinking water, vaccinations and tents.
- Click here to donate to UNCHR and here to help the WFP.
OR you could:
- Send a letter to your country’s delegation at the UN to comply with their pledges. The main donor countries are: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.K., the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, France and Canada. Click here to find out whether your country took part in the 2014 pledge for humanitarian assistance in Syria.
Finding data on the Syrian conflict
Finding credible data on the conflict in Syria has been a difficult endeavour for both journalists and policy-makers. One approach many have been finding useful is the use of crowdsourced maps. Syria Tracker and the Women Under Siege Syria chapter are the most noteworthy crowdsourcing initiatives that aim at mapping the conflict in Syria with the help of local volunteers.
Syria Tracker has considerable geospatial data on the number of civilian deaths, recorded by volunteers, and “resulting from the Assad regime” since March 2011. Although this dataset must be taken with a grain of salt, as it only represents the work of activists working again the government, it gives detailed accounts of the causes of deaths (either through air strike, gun shot, bomb or the use of chemical weapons) and the victim’s identity (gender and age).
Women Under Siege monitors acts of sexual violence which are reportedly committed against men and women. Open Street Map is another crowdsourcing initiative, on a global scale, which geospatial experts contribute to for the sake of good mapping. In Syria, Open Street Map offers comprehensive maps on the country’s main roads, natural resources and facilities location (such as hospitals and schools).
By translating this geospatial data into a GIS (geographic information system) software (known as ARC Map), one can visualize if there is a correlation between different aspects of the conflict.
The following map, for example, shows the location of refugee camps surrounding the Syrian borders, the major border crossings into the country and the main IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps within the country. All camps are obviously close to transit points and to major roads.
The next map shows the location of all of the IDP camps and the location of the main waterways (rivers and lakes) within Syria. This is important because it shows that the livelihoods of the internally displaced is closely linked to access to water (as you can see most camps are situated near a waterway).
In the end, the availability of geospatial data on conflict areas, (and in this case on Syria), is bountiful. However, this type of data is not available to the general public. I was able to acquire all of the data above for free but one must acquire technical skills to be able to make sense of the data. GIS is one way, among many others, to spatially visualize data.
Mapping the conflict in Syria
For the data story assignment, I would like to present data that I found on the current conflict in Syria while working on a GIS project. I will be using crowdsourced maps such as Syria Tracker and Open Street Map, which are based on the work of local volunteers, to map the conflict in Syria.
I am currently leaning how to use GIS, which is the study of geospatial information, and I thought it would be interesting to use the geospatial data I am currently working with, to tell a story, a story of conflict and its link to geographic features.
Syria Tracker has geospatial data on the number of deaths “resulting from the Assad regime”, recorded by volunteers on the ground since March 2011. Although this data must be taken with a grain of salt, it gives a good overview of patterns such as female as opposed to male casualties, and the location of casualties amongst the opposition forces and the population living within opposition control.
Open Street Map on the other hand, gives an overview of the main roads, waterways and land cover in Syria. By overlaying different data sets, one could visualize if there is any link between conflict density and proximity to roads for example.
Below is an example of a crowdsourced map which shows the main roads in the country. I plan on producing a more comprehensive map for this assignment but please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.
— Elissar
Death of a Canadian journalist in Syria
Last Sunday, a young Canadian freelance photographer was killed in Aleppo while covering the civil war in Syria. Ali Mustafa was one of the few journalists in the country as the time.
Mustafa and seven others were killed after regime aircraft dropped barrel bombs in the Hadariyeh area of Aleppo, which is apparently under opposition-control, according to the Associated Press.
Mustafa’s family reportedly learned of his death through social media after his Facebook page lit up with remembrances. His family was apparently not aware that he was in Syria according to Time Magazine. He wrote on his Twitter page on February 14 that he was in Syria.
Three days earlier, Mustafa’s last post on his Facebook and Twitter accounts showcased the type of work he did for The Guardian, The Times of London and other major publications.
More work from #Syria up in @guardian, @thetimes, and elsewhere: http://t.co/f7D9XhnjnX / http://t.co/f7Q5NXXYwh / http://t.co/VQwUa80eMa
— Ali Mustafa (@_fbtm) March 6, 2014
On Twitter, many fellow journalists and political activists in the region lamented his death and praised the quality of his work:
Ali Mustafa, the Canadian killed in Syria, wanted to show the human side of war. Here are some of his photos https://t.co/CngKXgZjMm
— RJAA (@RyeJournAlumni) March 9, 2014
This is one of the first tweets to announce his death, by Borzou Daragahi the MENA correspondent for the FInancial Times.
Freelance Canada photog Ali Mustafa (@_fbtm) killed in #Syria regime barrel bombing in Aleppo today. One of last pics pic.twitter.com/BDa4NFzdrK
— Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) March 9, 2014
The accidental death of journalists occurs often in conflict areas but Mustafa’s death last Sunday sheds light on the precarious working conditions of freelancers in countries such as Syria, which are literally closed off to international media. In these conflict zones, freelancers are required to take greater risks to report the situation on the ground because traditional news outlets refuse to send their staff and offer them a certain degree of protection.
So sad. All those freelancers out there in war zones. @jsource: Canadian photojournalist Ali Mustafa killed in Syria http://t.co/thKIJegsYt
— Selena Ross (@seleross) March 11, 2014
This Post on Facebook by renowned Arab commentator Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, refers to Mustafa’s flatmate in Cairo, who gives a picture of the financial and emotional difficulties the journalist was going through at the time.
His death also sparked outrage from Syrian Anti-Asaad and leftists groups, which strongly attributed full responsibility to government forces for the attack. The Syria Freedom Forever blog, which describes itself as “dedicated to the struggle of the Syrian people in their uprising to overthrow the Assad authoritarian regime”, posted the following eulogy in honour of Mustafa and the attacks’ victims. The author of this post is unclear.
In response, the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) issued an open letter saying the organization was “deeply troubled” by Mustafa’s death, saying it served as a reminder that “Syria is the deadliest country for the press, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 63 journalists have been killed in Syria since March 2011 and another 37 are being held by rebel groups or are missing.