Earthquake Emergency
Urgent call for survival aid in support of Salqin
Salqin, Syria, after the earthquake of 6 Feb 2023. © R&R International AISBL
Salqin, Syria, after the earthquake of 6 Feb 2023. © R&R International AISBL
Salqin, Syria, after the earthquake of 6 Feb 2023. © R&R International AISBL
Salqin, Syria, after the earthquake of 6 Feb 2023. © R&R International AISBL
Salqin, Syria, after the earthquake of 6 Feb 2023. © R&R International AISBL
Salqin, Syria, after the earthquake of 6 Feb 2023. © R&R International AISBL
We need your urgent support to provide life-saving emergency aid to the families of our students in the city of Salqin, 5 km next to the Turkish-Syrian border, which has largely been destroyed in the 7.8 earthquake of last Monday, 6 February.
We need at least $25,000 for providing emergency shelters and warm meals for the families of our students who lost their home. There are no tents available in the area around Salqin, but our volunteers are building provisional brick houses and deliver warm meals. One brick house per family costs around $400. The ingredients for one warm meal per family cost between $5 and $8. Our volunteers also try to find as quickly as possible blankets, clothes and medical drugs. Whatever money arrives on our accounts will be transferred immediately to Salqin.
We give the guarantee that all funds received via our accounts that have the special mention “Earthquake” will go 100% to the families in Salqin. The emergency aid will be delivered through the volunteers of our Syrian branch on the ground. All overhead and transaction costs will be covered through our general budget. (Our overhead costs have been less than 1% since the very beginning of our work. The transaction costs are limited to a maximum of 2% thanks to the informal transfer systems used by our volunteers on the ground. We guarantee that none of these fees goes to terrorist organisations or war criminals that are sanctioned by the US or the EU.)
The deadly earthquake of Monday, 6 February, has hit some of the most vulnerable persons on earth in the Turkish-Syrian border region. This region is hosting most of the refugees and internally displaced of the Syrian war. The region of Syria most severely hit is the Idlib Province, which is mostly controlled by different militias opposed to the Assad regime, some of which are targeted by international sanctions as terrorist organisations. More than 4.5 inhabitants of this region, most of them internally displaced persons fleeing the oppression and the bombardments of the Assad regime, have been shelled every day by Assad’s and Putin’s forces. The earthquake has added catastrophe upon catastrophe.
In our first call for help, we asked all our donors and friends to make a contribution to the Syria Civil Defence, better known as “the White Helmets”, who are doing a heroic job in the most affected areas of Idlib. For many years, the White Helmets have been rescuing survivors of the bombardments by Assad’s and Putin’s air force that has targeted mainly civilian infrastructure. The White Helmets are operating independently from any terrorist organisation or militia. They have been awarded with several prices and international decorations. We still call upon you to support them.
However, we learned in the last days that four out of the 182 students of the R&R learning centre in Salqin have died in the earthquake. Most others have lost their home and are now living with their families in the street. Even though search & rescue operations are the first emergency, we cannot leave the families we serve stranded. The local volunteers of our Syrian branch have made a first needs assessment and we call upon your generosity to help those who survived. Temperatures are currently around 0°C in this area. Many survivors are facing certain death if international aid is not arriving soon. We guarantee that every donation we receive with the special object “Earthquake” will go 100% to the families of Salqin.
International aid is barely reaching this area. Even though the Assad government had promised to deliver parts of the humanitarian assistance reaching Damascus through the UN and affiliated NGOs to Idlib, none of these promises has materialised. For this reason, the UN Security Council has given the extraordinary authorisation to UN agencies to deliver cross-border aid from Türkiye without consent of the Syrian government. Russia, as permenent member of the Security Council, has repeatidely threatened to veto such cross-border aid, reducing the allocated border crossing to only one: Bab Al-Hawa, next to the city of Antakya. Despite such threats, the authorisation for cross-border aid was renewed on 9 January 2023 for 6 more months. However, it took the UN agencies three days before an aid convoy for the earthquake survivors has finally reached the border on 9 February.