Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: EU aid will also reach Syrians
An earthquake survivor tries to keep warm by a fire on February 8 in Aleppo, Syria.
© FIRAS MAKDESI / REUTERS
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
From Monday evening, the Europeans began to activate the various aid mechanisms for the regions affected by the earthquake in Turkey.
In Syria, voices are raised not to be left out of international aid.
The European Union (EU) promises that Syrians will not be forgotten.
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Like the Turkish government on Monday, the Syrian government also requested on Wednesday the activation in its favor of the European Union's civil protection mechanism.
Until now, the EU had no other possibility of working in Syria
in favor of the victims
than through its humanitarian agency Echo and the NGOs it supports.
These NGOs will now be its partners with the priority of supporting medical facilities, providing sanitary equipment, shelter and food, as well as repairing damaged infrastructure.
But above all, the activation of the European Civil Protection Mechanism allows the EU to announce an "
initial disbursement
" of 3.5 million euros for all these priorities as well as for water purification and for support to search and rescue operations.
European funding is welcome while drinking water and medicines are scarce.
“
There is a particularly worrying risk of contamination of water by cholera
, explains
Margaret Harris, spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) at RFI
.
Cholera was already present in the area.
And now that infrastructures such as water pipes are destroyed, it will be difficult for the population to access drinking water.
There is therefore a risk of an epidemic.
»
The European Union had promised that Syria would not be forgotten, but it needed this Syrian green light to act directly, even if it intends to move forward with caution and ensure that aid "
goes to the people who need it and will not be diverted
," stresses European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Janez Lenarcic.
For its part, Germany abounds and warns that it will help the Syrians, but not the regime of Bashar el-Assad, while the EU announces that it will organize a donors' conference for March.
The Kurds of Afrin in distress
In northern Syria, some populations were already in very complicated situations before the earthquake and find themselves in total destitution.
The Kurdish Institute in Paris is trying to support Kurdish families driven out of Afrin in northern Syria by Turkey.
"
The displaced are between Aleppo and Afrin in buffer zones or in
no man's land
, often in camps
," says the president of the Kurdish Institute in Paris, Kendal Nezan.
The border with Turkey is closed, and in any case Turkey already did not authorize humanitarian aid vis-à-vis the displaced populations of Afrin.
So there, it's really several misfortunes that happen at the same time: the rigors of winter, extreme poverty, extreme destitution plus the earthquake.
At least sometimes they had a roof, and even that roof has disappeared.
There's no one to look in the rubble, they're looking by hand, and it's terrible.
»
► To read also: Interview - Earthquake in Syria: "We demand the reopening of humanitarian corridors"
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