NGOs are at the frontline of addressing the devasting impact of the earthquake in both Türkiye and Syria. As the response moves from the acute rescue phase to more long-term operations, ICVA members are delivering humanitarian aid and responding to the needs of affected populations through a range of humanitarian programmes. To enable their work on the ground, serving the people affected by the earthquake, NGOs have also developed their individual and joint advocacy messages.
To ensure a principled and effective response, ICVA amplifies the voices of its members and asks for:
• Effective humanitarian coordination: Empowerment of the Whole of Syria system and leadership to ensure a country wide approach to strategic issues and strengthen the coordination model to improve the inclusion of NGO voices and ensure timely decision-making.
• Unconditional humanitarian access: Affected people are entitled to support and assistance, which can be provided by NGOs. However, ensuring access and preserving humanitarian space throughout the duration of the response is a prerequired condition for NGO delivery.
• Duty of care: All NGOs personnel and volunteers, regardless of nationality and status should have equal adequate access to duty of care provisions. Many national NGO colleagues have been affected directly by the earthquake and are entitled to support including mental health and psychosocial support.
• Quality funding: Timely, sufficient, flexible and long-term funding is another pre- requirement enabling NGOs to provide immediate emergency response within a longer-term perspective. Funding decisions should prioritize NGOs that have an immediate capacity for response, with national NGOs operating in Syria having increased access to pooled funds. States should quickly deliver on their financial commitments, and additional commitments are required as the needs remain high.
• Harmonized and simplified due diligence and flexibility in partnership: Such procedures will enable partners to scale up their protection and emergency response in a timely manner, focusing on the quality of response and accountability to affected people.
• Clarity on counter-terrorism exemptions: Multilayers regimes of sanctions apply to regions affected by earthquake in Syria and exemptions are in force currently under each of these regimes. However, for humanitarian workers the landscape is challenging to navigate. Further, harmonization across the exemption regimes and a clear, consistent interpretation is needed. In addition, current exemptions should be extended to cover the full range of humanitarian operational needs, such as fund and goods transfer.
(ReliefWeb)
