Syria: Where Is Our Outrage and Why Does It Matter That Its Missing? Aid workers work in some tough places. Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central African Republic, Syria...the list goes on. It can be a difficult life - faced with daily tragedy on a massive scale, far from family and friends for months on end, unchanging stodgy and irregular food, limited clean water. Hot showers are often a distant memory. Security curfew means that you need to be back at base before 6pm or dusk - whichever comes first. Then your evenings are spent hunched over your laptop, firing off emails to HQ or big institutional donors, desperately eking out the last of the battery before the generator dies. There is always too much work, too many people that need help and too little time. Distant gunfire lulls you to sleep, and you might catch a few hours before rolling out of bed in the early hours to another day in the boiling heat. There are many reasons that aid workers get frustrated. Not enough funding to keep vital projects going, local officials requiring endless and ever-changing paperwork to access refugee camps, bosses safely sat in HQ asking seemingly absurd questions in increasingly shrill tones while you calmly try to explain that you cant deliver what theyve asked for because the road is blocked by a local militia gang and they keep shooting at everyone. Among aid agency staff working on the Syria crisis, the levels of frustration are huge. And there is something else - a very real and visceral rage. Its directed in many places, but no less potent because of it. Primarily anger at the world, for watching as a country tears itself to bloodied pieces and muttering phrases like well, theres no good guys in this one... or arent they all terrorists anyway?. Pictures of eviscerated children failed to stir the indignation of the masses. Reports of the mass torture of civilians fell on deaf ears. Targeted killings of doctors, medics, journalists and aid workers skyrocketed and still - no outrage. Today marks 30 days since a UNSC resolution was passed for Syria, allowing for greater safe humanitarian access. So far we havent seen access widened; we havent seen a drop in the number of deaths from preventable causes like malnutrition, infection or asthma attacks. But were hopeful. This we can influence. We may not be able to change the course of this war and how it ends, but we have some power over the here and now. We can tell our governments that they must do more. We can donate to charities working tirelessly and fearlessly behind the scenes. You and I cant force peace; we dont know how this will end. And because we dont know how the Syria war will end, all we can do is change how many people live to see it.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:04:52 +0000
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