Life for children in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate. Shortages of electricity, fuel, safe water and sanitation are having a serious impact on the lives of women and children and the recent conflict is adding to their suffering.Click here to help.
The population of Gaza has now become totally dependent on humanitarian aid for its survival. There are shortages of foodstuffs including flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk, canned foods and fresh meats. Last year, 1.4 million Palestinians were estimated to be food insecure.
The health system is overwhelmed, having already been weakened by the 18 month blockade.
Utilities are barely functioning: the only electric power plant has shut down. At the moment, hospitals are relying on back-up generators. The breakdown of these generators would pose a serious risk to public health.
The water system provides running water just once every five to seven days. The sanitation system cannot treat sewage and is dumping 40 million litres of raw sewage into the sea daily.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Gaza Children's Appeal
Mark suggested that I post this link, and in honor of his birthday, I will.
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2 comments:
Or you can give to an organization that helps the women of Afghanistan, who have one of the lowest rates of literacy for women in the world, one of the highest mortality rates in childbirth, 60% of marriages involve girls under the age of 16, and not surprisingly one of the highest suicide rates for women in the world. And you'd know that your 'help' is not mostly going to support a top-heavy international salary structure based in Geneva. See www.aiwr.org for more details.
Dear Anonymous,
Well, there are many worthy causes to which we can all donate; it is not a zero-sum game, I hope.
My purpose in forwarding this blog entry, and amplifying the points raised are a) this situation has vanished from American media coverage, b) the new Israeli government is not going to make things any better, c) our elected government & our complicated allegiances are tangled up in the very causes of this situation, and d) the UNICEF would seem to be an effective and relatively transparent organization that we of differing politics could agree to support.
And we can also support organizations such AIWR which is doing its own worthy work in another area of the world infinitely screwed up by the meddling of imperialist powers.
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