International (Page 52)

The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world.

It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to work in an Ebola treatment centre. Most Canadian Red Cross aid workers try to anticipate what they will see and experience on a day-to-day basis but quickly realize that the experience is not what they thought it would be. Nikola Latinovic, an aid worker from Windsor, Ontario, found this to be the case during his four-week mission in Kono, Sierra Leone.

Hope, solidarity, dignity, knowledge, love, compassion. These words have been crucial in supporting the communities affected by the Ebola outbreak. And these words have inspired a new Red Cross Red Crescent campaign called Words Against Ebola.

The Round-up offers a weekly sample of what our sister Red Cross Societies are working on around the world.

How relevant is international humanitarian law in modern conflicts? This depends on whether the laws are applied and respected. It’s also important to remember that “laws of war” are constantly changing.

These are a few of the perspectives presented recently at the second annual International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Conference held at the University of Calgary. 

Thousands of people have been affected after Cyclone Pam, a category 5 storm, made landfall in Port Vila, Vanuatu, on Friday, March 13. This was the strongest tropical storm to make landfall since Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in November 2013. 

Sara came to Turkey two years ago, fleeing conflict in her hometown. “Many of us saw very bad things happening,” she said. “We are adults but there are many children needing psychological support as they experienced a lot of trauma. They need to be able to express what they feel.”

Zeytan and her family came to Turkey less than year ago, after her father went missing.

“We don’t know where he is,” Zeytan’s mother said. “We waited as much as we could but it was not safe there anymore. I was pregnant and with a little baby. We crossed the border running, with nothing, just what we could carry.”