1 minute read

Humanitarian assistance: Everyone

EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO RECEIVE ASSISTANCE

WHEN NATURAL DISASTERS OR WARS cause an emergency, we offer humanitarian assistance to secure sufficient nutrition, basic necessities, sanitation, clean water and accommodations to people in affected areas. We prioritise education in our humanitarian work because for children, returning to school as quickly as possible is essential as it provides a sense of safety and security in a crisis.

Advertisement

The purpose of humanitarian assistance is to alleviate suffering in an acute crisis. According to international humanitarian principles, everyone is entitled to assistance regardless of their ethnic background, religion or nationality. When providing humanitarian assistance, we respect local cultures and traditions, and work together with local people.

In 2020, much of the humanitarian assistance work carried out by Finn Church Aid focused on preventing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and on mitigating its impacts. Our work enabled children to attend school in emergency conditions and supported livelihoods and food security. We delivered emergency relief to Beirut after the devastating port explosion and began work to rebuild destroyed school buildings. Humanitarian assistance programmes supporting refugees In our programme countries continued.

To live our values, we include beneficiaries in the assistance process from planning and implementation to results evaluation. In addition to offering emergency relief, we help people in affected areas to increase their emergency preparedness awareness. It is our goal to transition from humanitarian assistance to long-term development cooperation as quickly as possible.

Finn Church Aid has been awarded the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) certification. Our partners and funding providers include the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO), and many UN organisations. We are a founding member of the ACT Alliance, the global coordinator of the humanitarian assistance provided by ecumenical organisations. STOP

This article is from: