Nov PF Topic

I affirm the resolution resolved, Resolved: In response to the current crisis, a government should prioritize the humanitarian needs of refugees over its national interests. Contention 1: The government's sponsorship of providing services is a good example of how nations can prioritize the humanitarian needs of refugees over its national interests. Richard 2014: The State Department and USAID are major funders of the top humanitarian organizations responding to the crisis in Syria and the region, providing over $1.3 billion in assistance to date. In an attachment to this testimony, I provide a summary of the multi-faceted response that has been mounted by UN agencies and NGOs working with U.S. support, including the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the World Food Program (WFP), the UN Children"s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Together, these agencies and others are providing food, clean water, shelter, medical care and other basic essentials. They also go beyond these basic needs and seek to protect the most vulnerable members of Syrian society today " displaced children, at-risk women and girls, the elderly and the disabled " from threats as diverse as cold winters, unsafe play areas, poor sanitation, child marriage and violence against women and girls. Richard 2014: Since 2012, the United States has provided $300 million in bilateral budget support to the Government of Jordan, on top of our annual budget support, specifically to offset spending Jordan has devoted to hosting refugees from Syria. We have also provided over $30 million to help alleviate strains on the water and education systems. USAID has built five new schools in northern Jordan and is expanding 67 existing schools. It is also supporting a water program focused on water collection, storage, conservation and the repair of water pipelines in communities in northern Jordan hosting a large number of refugees. New programs have also been launched to help community members, parents and schools cope with tensions between Syrians and Jordanians. WFP vouchers are used by refugees to buy food from merchants, thus providing another benefit directly to local people. The United States also provided a $1.25 billion sovereign loan guarantee to help Jordan respond to external pressures, like the Syria crisis, while it continues its economic reform program.The United States has provided more than $96 million through international organizations and NGOs to support the Government of Turkey in its humanitarian response. Our assistance has funded tents, blankets, cash cards for food, cook stoves, schools, education supplies, teacher training, technical assistance and more. We have provided $70 million for programs to help refugees in Iraq, and I was in Erbil in mid-December when UN relief flights began to operate between that Iraqi city and Quamishly in Northern Syria. Contention 2: History has proven that the governments should prioritize humanitarian needs over national interest. A. DE WAAL, 1997;T. G. Weiss,1999 The birth of the modern human rights-based "solidarity" movement has often been located in NGO responses to the Biafran famine in 1968.11 The famine resulted from the independence war fought by Igbo secessionists of Biafra state in south-eastern Nigeria against the Federal Government. The secessionist struggle received no diplomatic support from the West, the Soviet bloc or other African states, which were concerned over the destabilising effects of questioning state borders. Within a few months the dominance of the government forces and the lack of outside aid had doomed the struggle to failure. As Alex de Waal notes, it was only by accident that Biafra became a cause celebre for the human rights movement. The international attention stemmed from the famine becoming news through the publication of photographs of severely malnourished children. The media coverage, of the first African famine to become headline news, led to accusations that the British governments" arms shipments to the Nigerian leadership and lack of support for the Biafrans was making it complicit in genocide by starvation. The lack of UN or outside government relief for the secessionists enabled the humanitarian aid effort to be monopolised, for the first time, by the NGOs. Biafra was the ICRC"s first large-scale relief operation and Oxfam"s second field operation. The first real test for non-government humanitarian organisations resulted in a split between the ICRC and major NGOs over the nature of humanitarian action. Oxfam broke its commitment not to act unilaterally and took an openly partisan approach claiming that "the price of a united Nigeria is likely to be millions of lives".12 Several international NGOs followed, arguing that breaking from the ICRC position of noncriticism was the only ethical way of assisting the population because if the Biafran people lost the struggle for secession they would face systematic massacre by Federal forces. The NGOs and the church-funded campaigns became the main propagandists, and source of international support, for the Biafran struggle. The Joint Church Airlift supplied aid and attempted to establish a Biafran air force, against Nigerian government opposition. This led to a federal ban on outside aid flights. Contention 3: Many human rights groups monitor and advocate for the wellbeing of refugees. JEN Following the uprising that began in Tunisia on December 18, 2010, a civil protest broke out in southern Daraa in Syria in March 2011 and escalated into armed fights. Surging violence threatened the lives of citizens and kept producing huge numbers of internally displaced persons and refugees for several months. As of January 2015, about 3.8 million Syrian refugees have fled their country and about 7 million people are internally displaced. The number of people in need of help has reached roughly 12 million. Jordan, one of the major recipient countries, has about 620,000 Syrian refugees. JEN The difference in culture between People from Jordan and People from Syria is evident in the drastically different way they use water. Moreover, due to the increase in number of refugees, it is getting difficult to provide water equally to all the residents in the camp. In order not to cause feelings of unfairness and discontent amongst refugees, improvement of water situation is a pressing issue. As the length of stay for many of those living in the refugee camps is getting prolonged, JEN has begun building a water supply network located in a camp area that works as an organizing body of water and hygiene related activities. We are working alongside other NGOs and international organizations with the goal of providing safe and stable water supply for the refugees. In addition, as a way of supporting the Water and Sanitation Committee run mainly by the residents, JEN repairs water sanitation facilities, which the committee itself cannot tackle due to its tight budget and lack of technology. Sources used: 1.http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk... 2.http://www.jen-npo.org... 3.http://www.state.gov... So with these reasons and many more, I strongly urge you to put a pro ballot in today's debate. Thank you. `TheResistance