NEWS FROM
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF
April 11, 2003
In this news release:
- Iraq Update: Some Food, One Truck, Silent Phones
- Students In Iowa Fast Each Night for Needy People in Iraq
- 'Sweet Water' Will Replace the Salty Drops of Drought in India
For more information contact Jonathan Frerichs at (410) 230-2800.
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IRAQ AID UPDATE: SOME FOOD, ONE TRUCK, SILENT PHONES
Baltimore, April 11, 2003 -- The humanitarian crisis in Iraq is difficult to assess or address adequately at present. Medical activities and emergency shelter operations in Iraq were continuing at last report. Aid reached northern Iraq by road from Syria early in the week. However, insecurity in Iraq and dead phone lines to Baghdad are the order of the day and the week for Lutheran World Relief-related staff supporting aid efforts from Jordan.
When conditions permit, an assessment team is ready to enter Iraq from Jordan for the Action by Churches Together emergency alliance that includes LWR. Meanwhile, latest relief activities include:
- Churches in Syria and Lebanon provided 150 food parcels for Iraqi refugee families. The flow of refugees to Syria increased during the siege of Baghdad. Numbers cited are in the hundreds.
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A first truckload of aid reached northern Iraq from Syria this week. [See photo, right.] The ACT-Middle East Council of Churches shipment carried canned food and 1500 blankets for church shelters in Mosul. Bishops in Mosul said medical supplies were badly needed there.
- A truckload of supplies for four pediatric hospitals in Baghdad has waited all week in Jordan because of safety concerns. Meanwhile, Baghdad hospitals received high numbers of casualties.
- Three water engineers installed a water system yesterday at a hospital in Umm Qasr, a port town in southern Iraq. The ACT-Norwegian Church Aid engineers will assist with water systems in the city of Basra next.
STUDENTS IN IOWA FAST EACH NIGHT FOR NEEDY PEOPLE IN IRAQ
Baltimore, April 11, 2003 -- A group of students at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, are fasting every night from 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. until a ceasefire is reached in Iraq. The college will donate a portion of the cost of missed meals to Lutheran World Relief's efforts to aid Iraqi families.
The students have varying views on the war but a share a commitment to help people who are suffering in Iraq. They gather each evening for a candlelight vigil at the center of the Wartburg campus."
Our focus is not necessarily on the charity. It is on solidarity," said Itonde Kakoma, a religion major and organizer of the fast and vigils who has been fasting from sunset to sunrise since March 21. "At sunset, I realize that I am connected to the greater world."
'SWEET' WATER WILL REPLACE THE SALTY DROPS OF DROUGHT IN INDIA
[A four-year drought grips the state of Rajasthan in India. The impact is most severe in rural areas, among low-caste people and for women who must fetch water on foot but eat little when their households are low on food, as now. But in the report from Rajasthan below, Lutheran World Relief’s Carolina Castrillo reports from where LWR and Church's Auxiliary for Social Action, a partner organization in India, are helping 12,000 people in 24 villages.
A drought mitigation project supplies drinking water and pays badly needed wages to local people improving rainwater catchments and storage systems. Their goal is to store enough water to get through future droughts. LWR recently secured $300,000 for the project from the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the U.S. Department of State.]
Jodhpur, Rajasthan -- "The people in the communities I visited always expressed their appreciation for LWR doing something for them at this critical time.
"I was really touched by the harsh conditions of the drought and how people struggle for survival in the midst of the desert. There is literally no clean drinking water. People are drinking saline and contaminated water because they cannot pay for fresh or 'sweet' water. Women have to spend their day, after doing the early morning housework, walking about two miles to bring water for their families from the nearest well. In one place they are mixing one-third sweet with two-thirds saline water.
"In one of the communities people dig about 100 feet into the soil to reach filtered water from a recent light rain. There are several of these in the community, some belong only to one caste and are not shared with other castes. Women get down there one by one and wait up to three hours until the drops fill one pot.
"Entire families have migrated. In some cases, men and children are able to find jobs nearby but in terrible labor conditions. About 60 percent of the men in one of the communities I visited are already sick from lung disease after working several years in open mines without protection. I met a boy who is a bonded laborer in one of the mines — he is condemned to work there for the rest of his life since his father owes the mine owner a 12,000-rupee debt. I also met two girls, aged eight and 15, who are working in a field nearby. They do not receive any salary, they are paid in-kind with fodder for the animals that they themselves must cut.
"I visited a number of government cash- and food-for-work sites and two cattle-relief sites. Some families have moved in with their cattle to live in animal shelters under sub-human conditions. Hundreds of cattle have perished already in the communities targeted by [our] project.
"CASA and the local partners have already conducted the ground work for implementation. I was very impressed by their capacity in conducting family surveys in the 24 selected communities. They are really experts in targeting and very committed to serve the most vulnerable families in the communities.
"The villagers confirmed the issues CASA already raised with us: the problem of indebtedness and moneylenders, access to markets, problems of alcoholism and in some cases opium consumption (male members), price and quality of food."
[For more on this project, see "Divining Interventions: Solutions to Water Scarcity in India" in the March, 2003, edition of LWR’s newsletter TOTO. Contact vwhetstone@lwr.org or call 410-230-2800 for a copy or subscription.]
