Tag Archives: humanitarian law

Judge rejects bid to block end of aid to Hurricane Maria evacuees

FILE PHOTO: Ysamar Figueroa carrying her son Saniel, looks at the damage in the neighbourhood after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria, in Canovanas, Puerto Rico September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo

BOSTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Thursday rejected a request to block the U.S. government from cutting off aid to hundreds of Puerto Rican families who fled the hurricane-ravaged island in 2017 and are living in hotels and motels across the United States.

But U.S. District Judge Timothy Hillman in Worcester, Massachusetts, ordered the government to continue providing assistance to people who were forced to leave their homes because of Hurricane Maria until Sept. 13 so they could prepare.

Lawyers for a group of Puerto Ricans pursuing the lawsuit had argued that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) decision to terminate aid violated their due process rights and contended that they being discriminated against.

But Hillman said they were unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claims and rejected their request for an injunction that would require FEMA to continue providing aid to evacuees until they obtained temporary or permanent housing.

FILE PHOTO: A broken traffic light, a street sign and branches lie on the street after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico September 22, 2017. Picture taken September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: A broken traffic light, a street sign and branches lie on the street after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico September 22, 2017. Picture taken September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo

“While this is the result that I am compelled to find, it is not necessarily the right result,” Hillman wrote.

He said he could not required FEMA “to do that which in a humanitarian and caring world should be done,” but could only order it to do what the law requires.

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico with winds close to 150 miles per hour (240 km per hour) on Sept. 20, causing an estimated $90 billion in damage to the already economically struggling U.S. territory.

On Tuesday, the official death toll from Maria, the most powerful storm to hit the Caribbean island in almost a century, was raised to nearly 3,000.

According to FEMA, 1,044 families displaced by Maria as of Wednesday were receiving aid under a program that pays for hotel lodging. Since its launch the program in total has helped 7,032 families displaced by Maria, FEMA said.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Nearly 1000 killed in attacks on health workers in 2014-15

Candles are pictured outside the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Nearly 1,000 people were killed in attacks on health centers worldwide over the past two years, almost 40 percent of them in Syria, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday in its first report on the growing scourge.

The United Nations agency documented 594 attacks resulting in 959 deaths and 1,561 injuries in 19 countries with emergencies between January 2014 and December 2015.

Syria, torn by civil war since 2011, had the most attacks on hospitals, ambulances, patients and medical workers, accounting for 352 deaths. The Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Iraq, Pakistan and Libya, followed.

Some 62 percent of all attacks were deemed intentional and many led to disruption of public health services.

“This is not an isolated issue, it is not limited to war zones, it is not accidental. The majority of these are intentional,” Dr. Bruce Aylward, executive director of WHO’s emergency program, told a news briefing.

“It is also not stopping and it has real complications for what we are trying to do. It is getting more and more difficult to deploy people into these places, it is getting more and more difficult to keep them safe when they are there and it is getting more and more difficult to ensure they survive, let alone recover in crises.”

The casualty figures include 42 killed and 37 wounded in a U.S. air strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last October.

A U.S. military report last month said that the incident did not amount to a war crime but was caused by human error, equipment failure and other factors, but MSF has called for an independent inquiry.

WHO said 53 percent of the attacks were perpetrated by states, 30 by armed groups and 17 percent remain unknown.

“One of the most important rules of war you is that you don’t attack health care facilities, health care providers, the sick, the disabled. So these attacks do represent gross violations of international humanitarian law,” said Rick Brennan, WHO director of emergency risk management and humanitarian response.

“Violations of international humanitarian law, if proven, can be considered war crimes and the perpetrators can be taken to the International Criminal Court,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.N. says world must stand up for ignored humanitarian law

Bulgarian border policemen stand guard near barbed wire fence constructed on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, near Malko Tarnovo

By Dasha Afanasieva

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The U.N.’s refugee agency said on Monday border closures in Europe to stop migrants were “inhumane”, and government efforts to stem the flow had averted the crisis only temporarily.

The border closures across the Balkans and a controversial deal between Turkey and the EU have sharply reduced the number of people crossing into Europe this year, after a million made the often perilous journey in 2015.

“There are a lot of people patting themselves on the shoulder and saying the deal worked, the people have stopped coming: but there’s more to it than that,” Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said on the sidelines of the world’s first humanitarian summit.

“It has pushed the problem backwards and the problem is not yet solved.”

On the moves to seal borders, she added: “The sudden closure and the action by unilateral states was inhumane vis-à-vis many vulnerable people.”

Under the deal between Europe and Turkey, Ankara has agreed to take back illegal migrants from Europe in return for aid, accelerated EU accession talks and visa-free travel to the bloc.

Host country Turkey has taken in nearly 3 million refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war and spent nearly $10 billion. But aid groups say it is not a safe country for refugees.

Last week a Syrian on the Greek island of Lesbos won an appeal against a decision to forcibly return him to Turkey, successfully arguing that Turkey does not afford refugees the full protection required under the Refugee Convention, rights group Amnesty International said.

Fleming said it was not yet clear whether this would set a legal precedent.

Finalisation of the EU-Turkey deal has been held up by disagreements over Turkey’s anti-terrorism law, which Brussels wants brought in line with European standards.

Billed as the first of its kind, the United Nations summit in Istanbul aims to develop a better response to what has been called the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two.

(Editing by David Dolan and Andrew Roche)