Oxfam & United to End Genocide & MoveOn.org & Al Jazeera – 2015-09-04 22:59:59
https://secure2.oxfamamerica.org/page/content/syria
ACTION ALERT:
ACTION ALERT: Urgent — Help Syrian Refugees.
Millions Need Our Help
Raymond C. Offenheiser / Oxfam
(August 5, 2015) — After four years, millions of refugees from Syria’s armed conflict are suffering. More than 4 million people have fled Syria as refugees, and 1 million of these people have fled over the last 11 months.
Close to 8 million people are displaced inside Syria. Without adequate food, clothes, shelter, and health care, untold numbers are struggling to provide for their families. Oxfam staff are hearing firsthand from Syrians that their children are becoming increasingly hungry due to cuts in the amount of food being provided to Syrian refugees.
In Lebanon and Jordan, Oxfam is helping families get the essential supplies they need, while protecting public health with clean water and safe sanitation. In war-torn Syria, we are supporting repairs to damaged water networks and helping keep clean water flowing to hundreds of thousands of people.
But our work on this is crisis is severely underfunded.
ACTION ALERT: President Obama,
Act to End the Suffering of Syrian Refugees
Erik Leaver / United to End Genocide & MoveOn.org
(August 5, 2015) — The drowning of a little boy put a human face on the massive crisis in Syria this week. He was one of 4 million Syrians who have fled their homes since the war began four years ago. And he became one of the more than 220,000 people killed in the conflict so far.
The world has failed to respond to the massive influx of refugees, leading to the deaths of thousands at sea. Immediate action is needed to save lives.
President Obama, the United States must act immediately to help those running for their lives from the mass brutality in Syria. I call on you to commit the US to accepting more Syrian refugees and providing financial help to others who are sheltering those in desperate need. And I urge you to redouble efforts to bring the conflict and mass atrocities in Syria driving this crisis to an end.
Sign Erik’s Petition
The United States can and should be doing more. President Obama should call on European leaders to end their intransigence and immediately accept desperate refugees, launch rescue operations, and provide emergency shelter. Our own country should commit to resettling more refugees and providing greater financial assistance.
The father of the boy who drowned this week said, “We want the world’s attention on us, so that they can prevent the same from happening to others.”
He’s right. Our attention is desperately needed.
After four years of inaction, this crisis won’t stop until the US and the world commit the political and economic resources needed to bring an end to the war. Tell President Obama to commit to providing more aid to end this crisis.
Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.
Drowned Refugee Aylan’s Father: Let Him Be the Last
Father of boy whose body was found
on a Turkish beach says he wants the
world to see the plight of refugees
Al Jazeera America
(September 4, 2015) — The father of a Syrian toddler whose lifeless body was found on a Turkish beach has said he wants the international attention on his death to focus on preventing similar incidents from happening again.
Abdullah Kurdi spoke on Thursday outside the morgue where the bodies of his sons Aylan and Galip, and his wife, who was believed to have been called Riham, were being held.
“We want the world’s attention on us, so that they can prevent the same from happening to others. Let this be the last,” Kurdi said, according to the Reuters news agency.
In a statement to police obtained by the Hurriyet newspaper, Abdullah said he had twice paid smugglers to take him and his family to Greece but their efforts had failed.
They had then decided to find a boat and row themselves but it began to take in water and when people stood up in panic, it capsized.
“I was holding my wife’s hand. My children slipped away from my hands. We tried to hold on to the boat,” he said in the statement. “Everyone was screaming in pitch darkness. I couldn’t make my voice heard to my wife and kids.”
Abdullah Kurdi plans to bury his family in the northern Syrian city of Kobane, scene of heavy fighting between Kurdish forces and fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
The image of Aylan, drowned off one of Turkey’s most popular holiday resorts, went viral on social media and piled pressure on European leaders to do more to help refugees.
Heart-rending pictures of the toddler’s lifeless body put a human face on the dangers faced by tens of thousands of desperate people who risk their lives to seek safety in Europe.
Wearing a red T-shirt and blue shorts, three-year-old Aylan from the Kurdish-Syrian city of Kobane was believed to be one of at least 12 Syrians trying to reach Greece who died when their boats sank.
Galip, five, washed up on another part of the beach.
“If these extraordinarily powerful images of a dead Syrian child washed up on a beach don’t change Europe’s attitude to refugees, what will?” Britain’s Independent said in remarks echoed in newspapers across the continent.
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