The UN has set aside August 19 as a day “to celebrate the spirit that inspires humanitarian work around the globe,” and to remember 22 aid workers who were killed in the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.
Size and number of conflicts ‘really worrying’
“The size and the number of crises that are going on right now, and how complicated they are because they are related to conflict, is really worrying,” says Ann Witteveen, manager of the humanitarian unit of Oxfam Canada. Among them the conflicts affecting people in Gaza, South Sudan, Iraq and Syria.
After the devastating typhoon in the Philippines in November 2013, Witteveen says Oxfam was able to make detailed plans to bring in relief in the short, medium and long term. “But some of these crises, when they’re conflict-affected, you’re not really sure what’s going to happen next week, never mind in the next three to six months.”
Listen‘People with power just don’t care’
Conflicts are often deep-rooted, making it much more difficult to solve problems and deliver aid, she says, adding it is especially hard when it seems the people with power just don’t care. Witteveen worked in South Sudan in the 1990s and met her spouse there.
“It’s a place that I have a real personal attachment to. I know what the place could be and the vast resources in the country. But to just see that it’s being ripped apart by a few political leaders for their own power… it really hurts,” says Witteveen.
‘People just like us’
However it is extremely rewarding to see the strength and passion of local staff, and how hard displaced people work to help their families and others around them.
“I think the main thing for me is that Canadians must understand that these are people in far flung and foreign places, but at their heart, they’re human beings just like them and they’re real people with hopes and aspirations for their kids, for their future,” says Witteveen.
“And so we should feel for them. We shouldn’t feel it has nothing to do with us.”
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