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STORY: SYRIA / KRAHENBUHL VISIT
TRT:3.05
SOURCE: UNRWA
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ARABIC /ENGLISH /NATS
DATELINE: 14 May 2014, DAMASCUS, SYRIA
1. Med shot, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl entering tent of displaced Palestinian widow Lina Shiekh Khaled her three children in UNRWA’s Jaramana collective shelter in Damascus. Khaled left the besieged and starved Yarmouk Palestine refugee camp in Damascus two months ago when she had a medical emergency. Her husband has been shot dead by a sniper in Yarmouk.
2.SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Lina Shiekh Khaled:
"I have three children. My husband is dead."
3.Close up, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl listening to Lina.
4.SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Lina Shiekh Khaled:
" We left our camp in an emergency situation."
5.SOUNDBITE (English) UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl
"We feel very honored to provide in these difficult circumstances the basics that are needed so that you feel at least protected and also supported."
Med shot, women and child outside tent in UNRWA’s Jaramana collective shelter in Damascus
6.Med shot, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl talking to UNRWA doctor in Jaramana collective shelter health team.
7.SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, UNWRA Commissioner-General:
"How many staff members do you have?"
8.SOUNDBITE (English) UNRWA doctor:
"Forty seven. Seven doctors and also nurses, a dentist, a clerk and a pharmacist."
9.SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, UNWRA Commissioner-General:
"The work that you are doing is incredibly important. And I know that of course in every situation where there is conflict, the situation changes completely for everyone, also for you and your work but I just also want to take this opportunity to thank you and your teams. Every day you have the energy to go back to it and I know it must be an incredible weight to carry on your shoulders."
10. Med shot, women and children sitting outside UNRWA building in Jaramana collective shelter
11. Med shot, Eid Khaled Qutaish, displaced from Husseinieh Palestine refugee camp in Syria with two children, standing outside his tent in the Jaramana Collective shelter
12. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Eid Khaled Qutaish:
" We all hope to return to our homes, God willing."
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, UNWRA Commissioner-General:
"May God in the future also reward you for the patience, the resilience, the strength that you have for your own family, for everybody that count on you. But also for the generous words that you have for the UNRWA staff because it’s deeply appreciated and I know how difficult and how many expectations you may have from day to day, but to hear that you feel that the UNRWA staff is fighting for that, is very appreciated."
14. Wide shot, women and children among tents in UNRWA’s Jaramana collective shelter in Damascus.
15. Med shot, woman holding baby
16. Close up,two little boys outside shelter:
17. Med shot, Mohammad Taha Taha in his tent, displaced from Yarmouk camp in Damascus in December 2012. Mohammad and his 14 family members, including his children and grandchildren, took refuge at the UNRWA collective shelter in Jaramana camp in Damascus
18. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mohammad Taha Taha:
" Widows and women with missing husbands and orphans are waiting since two years. They are waiting for financial and moral support."
19.SOUNDBITE (English) Pierre Krähenbühl, UNWRA Commissioner-General:
" You can be sure that every single person inside the UNRWA team here but also myself, will look at opportunities and if there is more resources that we can get to support our activities we will think about additional things and we will think about them together. Because you have probably more of the ideas that would make sense and if we can support we will try to find that if it is possible."
20. Med woman with two children by tent.
21. Wide shot, tents inside UNRWA Jaramana collective shelter in Damascus.
22. Close up, workers preparing food in communal kitchen
23. Close up, girl eating out of cup
24. Wide shot, crowded alley between tents
25. Med shot, boy between tents
26. Med shot, girl outside tent
UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl paid his first visit to Syria on Wednesday (14 May) to see for himself the extreme hardship that Palestine refugees in Syria are facing as a result of the ongoing armed conflict.
Many refugees have, often overnight, lost everything from their homes, their livelihoods, their businesses and their hopes. In their families, they had confronted death, injury and disappearance. As another generation of Palestinians experiences the trauma of displacement, their situation has become, in human terms, nothing short of catastrophic and yet is often being overlooked.
“The critical imperative”, Mr. Krähenbühl emphasized, is “improved conditions to deliver the much-needed assistance to affected refugee communities. All parties must understand that safe, uninterrupted and substantial food distributions must become the norm. UNRWA must be allowed to provide medical supplies, hygiene items, water and other essential humanitarian supplies to civilians in Yarmouk, as well as in several other embattled camps and locations in the country.”
In his meetings with Government of Syria officials, including Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Hussam Eddin Alla, Social Affairs Minister and Chair of the Higher Relief Committee Dr. Kinda Al-Shammat and Director of the General Authority for Palestine Arab Refugees Ali Mustafa, Mr. Krähenbühl acknowledged the role of the Syrian authorities in enabling UNRWA to provide humanitarian assistance to the crisis-affected Palestine refugees across Syria. But he stressed that significantly more needed to be done.
In Homs in central Syria, the Commissioner-General visited UNRWA installations and met Palestine refugees who have been exposed to a multiplicity of traumas over the past three years.
In his interactions with displaced refugees now housed at two UNRWA schools in Jaramana camp in Damascus, Mr. Krähenbühl listened to their stories of hardship and their feelings of loss and uncertainty. He pledged that UNRWA would continue to make every effort to support and assist Palestine refugees in this time of acute vulnerability.
Krähenbühl expressed gratitude to UNRWA staff for their commitment and for selflessly taking great personal risks to provide assistance to the refugees, often putting aside their own personal experiences and tragedies.
