After decades of war and neglect, Iraq's health care, water and sanitation services are in a dire state, failing to meet the basic needs of a large part of the population. Despite an improvement in security in some areas, basic services in many places are inadequate.
Ten years on from the start of the present conflict in Afghanistan, fighting is widespread, particularly in rural areas. International troops are starting to withdraw. At the same time, security is further deteriorating and local armed actors are multiplying.
Medical facilities before the conflict were functioning in Tripoli, but access to health care and life saving treatment became very difficult since the city was turned into a battlefield. Dozens of wounded people who urgently needed treatment did not receive it and died. Health-care workers often couldn''t access medical facilities due to the fighting. At the same time, hospitals and local clinics needed adequate medical supplies to be able to treat the many war wounded.
Ahead of The international Day of the Disappeared on the 30th of August, the ICRC is providing new material from Colombia where nearly 50,000 people are officially missing.
Entire villages have been destroyed and health-care centres looted in western Cote d'Ivoire. As an uneasy calm settles, thousands of refugees and internally displaced people want to return home yet there is little to return to.
Attacks on health-care workers and medical facilities in conflicts and violent upheavals across the world are affecting millions, according to a new report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The report, presented in Geneva, 10 August 2011, is based on research in 16 countries over 3 years since 2008. This is the first time such an investigation has been conducted on an international scale.
The floods that struck Pakistan in July 2010 went on for almost three months wiping out villages from the far north to the deep south of the country. Considered to be one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent times, around 11 million people were left homeless and 2,000 killed.
In June 2007, the Israeli authorities announced the suspension of family visits for Palestinians from Gaza who were being held in Israel. This decision, which was made a year after Palestinian armed groups captured the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, deprives both the detainees and their relatives of an essential lifeline, and cuts detainees off from the outside world. In the past four years, over 700 families from Gaza have been prevented from seeing their detained relatives.
''General Views'' footage of ICRC HQ in Geneva
2010 to 2011 have seen a major series of crises which have affected ever increasing numbers of people. Demand for humanitarian assistance has reached an unprecedented level at a time when long term conflicts continue unabated, according to the ICRC's Annual Report launched in Geneva today (26th May 2011).
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