DOHA: Qatar Red Crescent (QRC) staff are working to providing assistance under its Warm Winter Programme for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan and Syria.
As the temperature dropped to minus eight degrees Celsius in some areas amid Huda snowstorm, Rashid bin Saad Al Mohannadi, Director, Social Development Department, QRC, and Aiham Al Sukhni, Head, Disaster Management, Relief and International Development Department, QRC, went to Lebanon with a QRC risk reduction team to supervise the programme and coordinate with local authorities and the international organisations.
In Turkey, the QRC mission was early in place to avoid last year’s inconvenience for Syrian refugees due to delayed international relief interventions.
They secured 22,400 family blankets, 5,000 children’s wool garments, 6,000 tarpaulins, and heating oil.
In Lebanon, where the numbers of Syrian refugees registered with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) totalled 1,160,021, in addition to 29,587 unregistered ones, the QRC mission prepared in the run-up to the winter a 500-blanket distribution campaign to help refugees survive the cold snap.
A focus was on refugee camps in Arsal, which are poorly designed to protect against the freezing weather.
In Jordan, reported by UNHCR to have received 618,086 Syrians, relief aid was distributed at the Zaatari refugee camp, including 160 winter covers and 1,000 parcels of clothes and family covers.
The tents were drained and proofed against water, the camp’s ground was paved with gravel to prevent water pools.
QRC social facilities were opened to accommodate refugees whose tents or caravans were damaged by snow.
Globally recognised as a member of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and thanks to the protection of its emblem, staff, and vehicles under international laws and conventions, which gives it access to hot zones and the ability to help the vulnerable, the QRC mission in Jordan reached out to internally displaced people (IDP) camps in southern Syria (Al Amal, Al Breiqa, Seed, and Beer Ajam) and distributed 6,000 blankets, 2,000 mattresses and pillows and 1,000 mats.
The ground of Bab Al Salamah refugee camp was paved with gravel to prevent rain from mixing with the soil and forming mud pools, which can cause diseases among the camp’s 2,000 Syrian families. QRC staff are distributing 24,000 blankets and 350,000kg of heating wood to 4,000 families in the blockaded Eastern Ghouta.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, which hosts 623,000 Syrian refugees and 400,000 Iraqi IDPs, the QRC office distributed 6,000 blankets in Al Anbar and Mosul.
The Peninsula
