Don’t Forget the People

Guest post by Medair CEO Jim Ingram

The current situation in Afghanistan takes the focus away from its long-suffering people. Already struggling in a violent and chronically poor country, the Afghan people are more vulnerable than ever. The need to provide crisis relief – and equally important – sustainable support that will help the Afghan people recover and rebuild their communities is critical. We must not let the current political situation in Afghanistan stop us from supporting rehabilitative programs, especially those initiatives in small communities where there is real need and where real difference is being made.

Much of the country is affected by conflict. The violence is oppressive, both the kind imposed by man and by nature. Icy cold winters, droughts, floods, and earthquakes – are all regular events challenging a population that is already living in a war zone and plagued by chronic food insecurity and life-threatening health concerns. Consider that 20 percent of Afghan babies don’t live to see their fifth birthday due to preventable childhood diseases. Last year 50,000 children died because of diarrhea.
If we believe that all lives are of equal value, supporting a global community becomes much simpler. Just because a baby is born in Yawan, Afghanistan instead of Yens, Switzerland or Yonkers, New York doesn’t mean she is not entitled to clean water, a daily meal, or a chance to improve her life.

Medair is a Swiss-based, international humanitarian aid organization that seeks to relieve human suffering. We go in to provide aid that helps people through crisis, and we stay afterwards to help build high-impact programs that enable people to reclaim their independence. Since 1996, we have worked in Afghanistan, quietly providing assistance to forgotten and neglected communities. Our first project was a winter relief distribution to 10,000 war widows living in the south of Kabul.  We currently work with families affected by natural disaster, the chronically poor who are living in underdeveloped areas, and communities displaced by conflict and with no other means of assistance. We help Afghans build roads, health clinics, and schools in addition to providing crisis relief.

Our model is to partner with local communities and equip them with the skills necessary to carry on, independently. Medair’s emergency response team is based in Badakhshan, the province that experiences more natural disasters per year than any other region in Afghanistan. Our nutrition project is based there as well, as it is one of the country’s most food-insecure provinces, with some of the highest levels of malnutrition. Medair’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) programs help reduce waterborne diseases, one of the underlying issues of malnutrition.

When the snow melted last April, we travelled by donkey and connected with the most hard-to-reach Afghan families in Yawan, Kohistan, and Raghistan. Within two weeks of opening the Yawan clinic doors, more than 600 women and children were screened or admitted into the nutrition program, all ill from lack of food. To help the villages take responsibility for their own well-being, we recruited and trained almost 600 local volunteers to teach families about better health practices. During very intense one-on-one meetings, almost all of the 36,000 people in the region learned from the volunteers about nutrition, good hygiene practices, and how to care for sick children.

Humanitarian organizations ignore the social issues, racism, politics, violence, and prejudice to focus on helping people in need. We encourage the world to be involved and engaged and to focus on what is truly important: the people.

This is a critical time in Afghanistan. Let us not forget its people.

Jim Ingram, Medair CEO
Medair currently provides assistance to more than two million vulnerable women, children, and men in crisis who live in often difficult-to-access regions in Africa, Asia, and other areas of extraordinary need, including Afghanistan, South Sudan, Haiti, and D.R. Congo.