February 16, 2023, 10:12 PM
February 16, 2023, 10:12 PM
The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, has requested this Thursday to the international community finance an urgent humanitarian fund of 1,000 million dollars to help Turkey after the earthquake and has criticized that problems are addressed when it is too late.
The urgent fund seeks to assist the next three months to 5.2 million peopleallowing various organizations on the ground to scale up work led by the Turkish government in terms of food, protection, education, water and shelter, a statement said.
In the daily press conference of the UN, the spokesman Stéphane Dujarric has commented that the initiative is focused on Turkey After consultation with your Government, and has justified it by explaining that the neighboring country affected by the earthquake, Syria, already has an “established” humanitarian community.
The spokesman, in the face of criticism for the slowness in aid, has admitted that the United Nations humanitarian system is “pushed to the limit” and has criticized that many of the problems they alleviate “could be dealt with beforehand” but are pushed aside until the emergency arrives at “the UN’s doorstep” and “much more money is needed.”
This Thursday, he said, two of the three steps are being used between Turkey and Syria for 22 trucks loaded with food to reach the affected families, but has indicated that the workers themselves have been affected by the catastrophe.
“Everyone has risenhas dusted himself off and gone to work, but everything takes time, frustratingly, and our fuel is money: we need that money,” he reiterated.
The UN urges Member States to finance the fund for “one of the largest natural disasters of our time” and recalls that Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees in the world and has “been generous for years with its Syrian neighbors.” More than 9 million people in Turkey have been directly impacted by the earthquake, including 1.74 million refugees living in the 11 provinces that suffered the earthquakes.
