julie_imc

As a humanitarian organization, our concern is providing life-saving assistance. We adhere to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Code of Conduct, which states that we provide aid on the basis of need alone.

Yes, we are both living in the Kurdish region. I am in Erbil and Zozan is in Dohok. The Kurdish Government has been open to accepting refugees and supportive of the provision of services for these populations. The majority of the refugees are Syrian-Kurds.

Providing mental health programming in most of the countries we work in can be very challenging. IMC has worked in mental health programming in the Middle East for a number of years and has developed a variety of strategies for building trust among communities and enabling people to seek mental health support at a number of levels. Particularly focused on community-based mental health programming and involving psychologists and psychiatrist for more severe cases

Lebanon and Jordan are facing massive humanitarian crises themselves. I was previously based in Lebanon where we were responding to 1.5 million refugees - in a country of 4 million people. They estimate that 25% of the population in Lebanon are now Syrian refugees. That would be like 16m people arriving in the UK or 80m people arriving in the US over the span of a few years, and requiring all services - education, health, shelter, food, water, sanitation, etc. In addition, these additional populations put a huge strain on resources - such as water, which is already a limited resource in the region

Most of the people who flee come with nothing. In the fall, over 10,000 additional Syrian refugees arrived from Kobani in northern Syria. They first fled north, into Turkey and then traveled eastwards overland and then entered Iraqi Kurdistan. These people arrived with nothing. I think it is important to remember that people, before the war, were leading lives similar to what we do in the west. They had/have houses, cars, businesses, family homes, etc., but often arrive to these camps with very few possessions except for what they can carry.