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Volunteering with IRCS: Personal Transcendence and Societal Responsibility

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet. Randa El Ozeir: Choosing to volunteer with the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) is not to be taken lightly given the unrest and divisions the country has been grappled with for decades. “I still vividly remember an incident I went through in 2010,” recalled Ibrahim Ali Ibrahim, a seasoned volunteer with the IRCS. “I was still a fresh volunteer when I narrowly escaped being killed. I was carrying some detainees’ letters to their parents through the Red Cross at the time, travelling from Baghdad to Babel on a bus along with other civilian passengers. We came across a checkpoint for Al-Qaida in Latifiya area. One of the armed men, who was Iraqi, got on our bus and started a scrutinizing inspection, which sent a chill up my spine. What if he snatched my bag and interpreted my job with the Red Cross from his own angle, thinking that they are the crusaders?! He asked me for my ID, I told him that I was a student, which was true. Gunshots were echoing outside, and all I was thinking of “what if he ordered me to get off?” There would have been no turning back; only an unfortunate fate.” Whenever Ibrahim recalls this incident, he relives its frightening scenes vividly. “If it weren’t for a female passenger who appealed to the armed man in a motherly tone, I would have faced a horrible fate. After 30 minutes of absolute silence, I opened my mouth to thank my rescuer”. It is a totally different story when we come to a life-threatening moment. “When you know that the person facing you does not care about anything, when you know you cannot be protected by anyone, you feel that you’re nearing your end. The cars ahead of us were emptied from their male passengers who got shot. I would have joined those unlucky men!” Ibrahim stayed on path and the reward came “when I handed the letter in from a detainee whose mother thought he was killed by the Americans. When I delivered the good news, the father came running full-force, and the mother kissed me four times. At that moment, I beamed with heroic pride”. But volunteering with the IRCS does not always have a happy ending, thorny periods are bound to happen. After Ibrahim saved a five-year-old girl who got hit by a car in 2017 when he was a paramedic with IRCS between Karbala and Babel during Ashura, she passed away at the hospital few days later. “The girl fell a few meters farther from the accident’s location due to the collision’s impact and was unconscious. Her head was wounded. I saw the real sorrow and the tragedy in her mother’s and brother’s eyes. The blood was a sign of a possible bleeding in the head. There was pulse but no breath. I frantically started the first-aid procedure, then the girl threw up blood and resumed breathing and crying.” Ibrahim has earned lately a certificate to train paramedics. He has a background in analytic chemistry and teaches chemistry while still working on his Ph.D. “The fear I encounter doesn’t put me in the regret zone at all. Up to now, my work with the IRCS has been my breathing space. It brings me closer to the real and true life, the life of vulnerable and poor people. It makes me realize that I am not only a professor at the university who lives a normal life full of consumerism and leisure.” The beginning could be confusing as much as compensating. Safa Alaa Kamal, who joined the IRCS in 2016 and fully concentrates today, as an administrator and a volunteer, on women and children, said, “during my very first filed visit, which happens to be in a refugee camp in the north of Iraq, I felt overwhelmed with conflicting pull-push emotions. On one hand, I was unnerved to fail in helping adequately the displaced people who opened up to me and revealed their own struggles. On the other hand, I was proud of doing my role in alleviating their burden by letting them share their feelings in a safe space. They boosted my self-confidence as a likable volunteer.” Kamal’s drive to volunteering comes from a religious stance and from a societal sense of responsibility. “Volunteers are a crucial component of the society’s development. I believe that God creates every human being to fulfill a unique purpose, and I understood this since the day I learned that each one of us, including the identical twins, has their matchless eye iris print. I am planning on staying an IRCS’ volunteer for the benefit of my community. I want to leave for my children more advanced and cognizant surroundings.” Prior to COVID-19, Kamal used to contribute in awareness sessions for women, but due to social distancing and the curfew, she moved to arranging and doing home visits throughout Baghdad’s districts to deliver crucial info about preventing the virus. “Women are not created only to procreate and bring up children. They contribute in building an educated, healthy, and conscious society. I enjoy being a volunteer and living in a state of satisfaction, as this fills me with positive energy to invest in caring for my family and balancing between the two.” All through her years of volunteering, Kamal has never faced any gender discrimination, “at the contrary, being a woman made me more understanding of what families are going through. From my observation, the female volunteers are more in tune with others, and our communities want people who totally get their needs and recognize their sufferings. And our IRCS’ uniform with its emblem acts like an official permit to access all places. The IRCS is esteemed from everybody and is highly regarded for its good deeds and its humanitarian role.” “There’s always disappointment and joy,” concluded Ibrahim, “I think the joy balances out everything else and keeps me going. I can see what is going on behind the scenes. My work with the IRCS helps me to transcend and alleviate the innate human tendency to self-interest and selfishness. Others around me do not always look at it from this angle and they wonder why I spend my time in a place with no money when I can teach instead. The answer is crystal clear for me: volunteering takes from my time to give me an inner spirituality that no one can perceive except the person who does it.”

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Press release

COVID-19: Red Cross and Red Crescent urge more support for displaced people in the Middle East North Africa region

Beirut, 19 June 2020– Ahead of World Refugee Day on 20 June, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is increasingly concerned that migrants, refugees and internally displaced people are falling through the cracks. All people, regardless of their status, should be provided humanitarian assistance. “We know that migrants, refugees and internally displaced people are amongst the most vulnerable people in the region, and amongst that group especially women and children,” said Dr. Hossam Elsharkawi, head of the IFRC for the Middle East North Africa region. “They are particularly at risk for health complications and violence, their temporary accommodation can be crowded, often with inadequate sanitation and shelter or little access to medical care and good nutrition”. Red Cross Red Crescent National Societies across the region are working directly with authorities and international agencies to ensure that refugees, migrants and internally displaced people are included as part of all COVID-19 response operations. “Our Red Cross and Red Crescent teams on the ground are also seeing an increase in stigmatization towards displaced people,”said Elsharkawi. “We know that stigma as well as misinformation could prevent potentially infected people from seeking care – and this needs to be taken just as seriously as the virus itself.” Discrimination, language barriers and legal status can prevent people from accessing life-saving prevention and health information, and Red Cross and Red Crescent teams across the region are ensuring that people on the move can access information to keep themselves and their families safe – no matter their reading ability, dialect or country of origin. In Libya, the Libyan Red Crescent has done awareness campaigns targeting internally displaced people and migrants outside detention centres. They have also recently set up humanitarian service points to provide basic information to migrants and internally displaced people, distribute food and other basic necessities, as well support restoring family links activities. In Egypt, more than 200 migrant volunteers have been engaged in the response to provide support in local languages. In Iraq, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society has reached more than 50,000 people on the move and more than 6,000 Syrian refugees with health awareness sessions across 50 camps. In Jordan, the Jordan Red Crescent Society is targeting host communities as well as Syrian refugees with critical prevention messaging as well as distributing food baskets. In Tunisia, the Tunisian Red Crescent has been sharing COVID-19 health and hygiene information in migrant centres. “We know that many displaced people depend on humanitarian assistance for survival, and during this crisis we must continue to look for alternate and innovative ways to deliver assistance, in conditions that protect the health of both displaced people as well as staff and volunteers involved,”said Elsharkawi. “They must not be forgotten.” IFRC calls on all actors to ensure that migrants, internally displaced people and refugees are actively involved and considered in all response activities. They must have access to information about COVID-19 in a language they can understand as well as prevention measures and access to medical treatment in case of infection. The specific needs of women and children, the elderly and chronically ill, as well as those with disabilities among the displaced must also be addressed. World Refugee Day is marked on 20 June each year to celebrate the courage and resilience of the tens of millions of people forced to flee their homes due to war or persecution.

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UN and partners launch guidelines to address the needs of most vulnerable groups during COVID-19

CAIRO, 15 June 2020- Vulnerable groups, particularly women, displaced people, migrants, older persons and people with disabilities, may experience the most harmful impacts of COVID-19. This is due to many factors including discrimination and stigma, their exclusion from effective surveillance and early-warning systems as well as their limited access to primary healthcare services. Their particular needs must be addressed in our response to the pandemic. No one is safe from the virus unless all of us are safe from it. The new guidelines“COVID-19: How Can Risk Communication and Community Engagement Include Marginalized and Vulnerable People in the Eastern Mediterranean Region”have been issued by the Eastern Mediterranean RCCE Working Group, an inter-agency coordination platform established to provide technical support to COVID-19 preparedness and response in the region. The practical guidelines explain the vulnerability of marginalized groups to the pandemic and how national and local efforts can address them so that no one is left behind. Since its outbreak in the Eastern Mediterranean region, COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on its public health and economies. But its repercussions have not been felt evenly across societies. Marginalized and vulnerable groups, particularly those living conflict-affected countries, are among the hardest hit by the health and socio-economic impact of the pandemic. Risk communication and community engagement is an essential tool for governments and development partners to ensure that people are aware of the dangers posed by COVID-19 to themselves and their families, and are accounted for in national and local efforts to stop the spread of the virus. In order for RCCE efforts to be effective, they need to be gender-responsive and include all segments of societies, particularly the most of vulnerable and marginalized social groups. The RCCE Working Group consists of a wide range of organizations including UN Women, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Population Fund, the International Organization for Migration, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and EMPHNET. Thedocumentis a contextualized version of the original guidelines developed by RCCE partners in the Asia and Pacific region. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT : UN Women Regional Office for the Arab States Diego De La Rosa, Regional Communications Specialist E-mail:[email protected] Mobile: +66995037177 WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean Inas Hamam, Communications Officer E-mail:[email protected] Mobile: +201000157385 UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Office Juliette S. TOUMA, Regional Chief of Communications Office: +962-6-550-9624 Mobile: +962-79-867-4628 | +1-917-20-90-817 IFRC Regional Office for Middle East and North Africa Rana Cassou, Head of Communications Email :[email protected] Mobile : +96171802779 IOM Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa Farah Abdul Sater, Regional Media and Public Information Officer E-mail:[email protected] Mobile : +201060351567 UNFPA Arab States Regional Office Samir Aldarabi, Regional Communication Advisor Phone: +201068484879 Email:[email protected] GHD and EMPHNET: Working together for better health Asma Qannas, Technical Officer, Outreach & Emergency / Public Health Programs Mob: +962 79 879 0458 Tel.: +962 6 551 9962 | Fax: +962 6 551 9963

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Press release

Red Cross Red Crescent Mediterranean National Societies to tackle cross-cutting migration issues

Sarajevo/Geneva, 2 April 2019 – More than 150 Red Cross Red Crescent delegates from 23 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea are meeting in Sarajevo this week to discuss approaches to aiding vulnerable migrants and the communities receiving them. Hosted by the Red Cross Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Centre for the Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CCM), the meeting’s theme is “Standing for Humanity”. The focus on will be on the safety and protection of migrants, improving social inclusion, preventing trafficking and exploitation, mobilizing more volunteer assistance and the National Societies’ role in implementing the recently adopted Global Compacts on refugees and migration. “While our main focus is assistance for migrants, the Red Cross also assists the host communities,” said Rajko Lazic, Secretary General of the Red Cross Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “It was not long ago that our people experienced what it means to be a refugee, and some are still displaced in their own country and in dire need. We seek to balance assistance for both populations.” Maria Alcázar Castilla, spokesperson for the Centre for Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CCM) said the humanitarian issues faced by the Red Cross Red Crescent National Societies in the region are interlinked, so common analysis and approaches are needed. “The Mediterranean region is facing multiple humanitarian challenges - due to unrest and violence, the ongoing flow of vulnerable migrants, economic crises and climate change impacts. The conference intends to reaffirm the urgency of principled humanitarian action, promote humanitarian access and reinforce the absolute necessity of placing the safety and needs of people at the heart of our action,” she said. The President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Francesco Rocca will also address the conference. “Every human being, especially people fleeing conflict and insecurity, should have unhindered access to aid and also to information, at all phases of their journeys. Every human being has the right to protection, health care, education and social services” said President Rocca. “Human dignity should be respected and protected, regardless of their legal status.” Migrant arrivals in the Mediterranean region and other areas of Europe usually rise during spring and summer months.

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