MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th October, 2019) The Red Crescents of Turkey and Libya have agreed to join humanitarian efforts to address the Libyan crisis, Turkish Red Crescent President Kerem Kinik told Sputnik.
"We hold contact with the Libyan Red Crescent Society, and I just met with the Secretary-General of the Libyan Red Crescent Society in Geneva. We agreed to accelerate our joint efforts to reach needy people and rural areas in the countryside, mainly to provide health care and basic humanitarian assistance to the needy people. But it is a really complex crisis," Kinik, who is also a vice president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said.
According to Kinik, the most urgent needs in the region are a ceasefire and peace.
He called on the international community to press the warring parties on their violations of international humanitarian law, which include "targeting hospitals, healthcare facilities and public infrastructure," and to hold those responsible accountable.
The situation in Libya, which has been suffering from unrest and been divided between two governments since 2011, deteriorated in April when the Libyan National Army began an offensive on Tripoli, which is controlled by the UN-backed Government of National Accord. The latter swiftly announced a counteroperation.
The renewed violence has killed over 100 civilians and displaced more than 120,000, the United Nations said in September. The lives of almost 500,000 children are also at risk over the escalation in the area.
Kinik also drew attention to Yemen, another war-torn country in the region, which required as much international humanitarian support as Libya.
The Red Crescent is "monitoring the situation and the possibilities for a ceasefire to reach other places like Sanaa [Yemen's capital] ... and other distant areas. But so far there is no light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
He added that although Yemeni authorities helped the charity organization, it was not enough as most of the country's destroyed infrastructures required international and governmental humanitarian involvement to rebuild houses, schools, hospitals and other public facilities.
The United Nations has repeatedly called the Yemeni conflict the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with an estimated 24 million people - nearly 80 percent of the country's population - currently in need of aid and protection amid the ongoing armed conflict between government forces and the Houthi movement since 2015.
