Upon my recent visit to Iraq, I saw the intense psychological distress that over 500,000 Iraqi Yazidis experience every day. They have had to abandon their houses and families in order to o survive the violence of ISIS.
by Janelle Delorme, Regional Animator for Manitoba
The first time I heard about Sierra Leone, I was 14 or 15. I read an article about child soldiers who were fighting in the civil war. From the pictures I saw - children with guns, drugged and dismembered - it certainly did not appear “civil.” My heart broke. I couldn’t stay silent about this injustice so I wrote a paper for a high school project. At the time, the civil war in Sierra Leone was not on many people’s radar and the international community only started to talk about blood diamonds years later.
Happy are those, like me, who have taken a long journey. In December of 2014, I had the pleasure of visiting different initiatives carried out by Development and Peace partners in Niger and Mali, and speaking with villagers in these communities.
By Guy Des Aulniers, Emergencies Program Officer for the Middle East
It’s Monday morning in Erbil. It’s 6 a.m. and the sun still hasn’t come up. Santa Lucia Church is situated just across from the hotel where I’m staying. From my window, I can count about 40 tents, placed closely together, one glued to the other. In each tent, there are partitions which separate the three families that live there (each family consists of about 8 people), the rooms and the kitchens. Although there is heating, the ground is only covered with a burlap rug.
Sierra Leone currently has the highest incidence of Ebola, with over 7,786 infections and 2,696 confirmed deaths (as of January 14, 2015). Beyond the immediate health crisis, there have also been concerns raised pertaining to the long term socio-economic impacts of the disease. These concerns include the economy, the social fabric, food security and agricultural production (due to loss of human capital).
Jess Agustin, Programs Officer for the Philippines
Ten years after the Tsunami that took place on December 26th, 2004, Development and Peace’s partners in Aceh, Indonesia were given the opportunity to look back and reflect on the many remarkable and inspiring accomplishments that were achieved during the reconstruction period that followed.
Stéphane Vinhas, Programm Officer - Emergency Relief
With a fatality rate of over 60%, the result of the current Ebola epidemic on the body is obvious. The psychological impact is less visible, but the virus is also breaking morale. It is generating fear and negatively impacting mental health. In so doing, it is breeding social collapse, undermining the fabric of communities and contributing to the rise of rejection, violence and conflict, which, in turn, facilitate its spread.
The Ebola epidemic currently raging in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia is the largest, longest and most complex ever known. Its scope and exponential growth go beyond the highly lethal nature of the virus itself and are explained by the negative effects of poverty and inequality.
Yesterday Caritas Internationalis began a three-day meeting in Rome on issues regarding the crisis in the Middle East, with Development and Peace very much involved. The Caritas organizations of the Middle East, as well as Caritas partner associations, are meeting to assess the humanitarian situation and to re-evaluate the response of the confederation to the crises in the region.
