BEIRUTSTATEofMIND recently travelled with an aid convoy from the Turkish city of Gaziantep, across the Turkish-Syrian border to Aleppo to gain an insight into the difficulties charitable groups face in distributing aid in a conflict zone. Looking at issues such as the difficulties groups face communicating in an area with intermittent internet and mobile connections,passing from opposition to regime controlled areas and in ensuring aid is not stolen and sold on.
The article one of the BEIRUTSTATEofMIND team penned as a result of the experience additionally looks at how international aid is stymied by legislation dictating that host government's must give approval before international aid organizations are legally permitted to enter a country. It is linked below:
Sitting in a modest, third floor office in the Karagoz district of Gaziantep, Turkey, Yasser Mousa, 37, a lawyer and native from Azaz, Syria paces back and forth, mobile phone in hand, a look of concern on his face. As his conversation comes to a close, he puts down his phone and sighs.
“We cannot go today,” says Moussa in a gentle, high-pitched voice. “It is too dangerous.”
Mousa is director of The Syrian Youth Association for Relief a small charity that distributes basic aid items, including food, medicine, blankets, and clothing in the region around Aleppo, Syria. Operating from its base in Gaziantep across the border in Turkey, Mousa says that the organisation reaches around 25,000 families in the war-torn region. Today, the organisation’s latest aid mission has been postponed by unconfirmed reports that chemical weapons had been deployed in Aleppo.
To read more, hit the link, HERE.
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