Can the World Find $14 a day to feed Syrian Refugees ?
While the world is focused on the Syrian refugee crisis (now that the refugees have arrived in Europe) aid to refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and, especially, Jordan has been cut.
The cash-strapped World Food Programme has had to drop one-third of Syrian refugees from its food voucher program in Middle Eastern host countries this year, including 229,000 in Jordan who stopped receiving food aid in September, a spokeswoman said.
This is crazy. It would cost Europeans much less to feed refugees in Jordan than to host them in Germany. The moral obligation is equal for the USA even if few refugees are crossing the Atlantic. I really don’t understand what is going on.
Partly I don’t understand the UN at all — why is this financed by the World Food Program not the High Commission for Refugees project ? Why did I find an alarming article dated December 2014 making the same warning of an imminent interruption of the food voucher program ?
I assume the UN collectively is declaring a crisis of this program right now, because it is the best way to scare up contributions. I also don’t care much. No matter what the UN PR strategy might be, the world’s response to the refugee crisis is unreasonable and emergency funding for the WFP vouchers makes sense.
For the same reason the US can not provide reasonable low cost healthcare, we and the the world are to preoccupied with ourselves and all the reasons not to do something rather than finding a sensible solution. It is only when things reach a catastrophic point does the US and the world begin to mull over solutions. Too late in the process.
It does make sense to provide a solution for them in their homelands rather than wait till they migrate to Europe.
I also feel it is time for the filthy rich elite of the world to step up. Where are the Walton’s and the Koch’ s and all the other plutocrats that run the oligarchy. Why do we constantly let them turn all the focus of need to the middle class people who really have hearts. Does being filthy rich mean you have to have ice water in your veins for blood? The “scare up” mind set-polotics has become the norm for doing especially in Washington. Why?
I feel mixed about this. Often the people who are the first to flee conflict zones are the ones who have the money to go. At this point years later it becomes an honest humanitarian nightmare because conditions have become unsurvivable at home for these people, they walk because they have to walk, they get on boats or get in trucks where people may die because they WILL die if they do not.
More generally I wonder if there is moral hazard in refugee programs. Does buffering the impact of war create war? Buffering the economy from financial company wrongdoing certainly seems to create a climate where financial risk-taking becomes much more likely, does this also happen with war?
If we shelter refugees, are we also responsible for the facilitation of ethnic and religious cleansing that sends them from their homes?
Caring for these people is a moral imperative, but what are we doing to stop this at the source, what is being done to stamp out the systems of morality that generate these movements?
https://www.icrc.org/eng/donations/?o=420018