The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is supporting the relief efforts of Japanese aid groups assisting survivors of Friday's powerful earthquake and tsunami in ravaged northeastern Japan.
A massive emergency response operation is underway in coastal areas around the city of Sendai, although rescue efforts and aid deliveries have been hampered by significant aftershocks. Many communities still being inundated by tsunamis remain inaccessible.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is sending members of its Emergency Response Team to Tunisia to survey the humanitarian needs of thousands of people pouring into the country to escape violence in neighbouring Libya. Veteran team leader Alan Manski and other IRC emergency experts will be traveling to the two main border crossings, Ras Adjir and Ben Guardane, where the Tunisian military has set up transit centres. Manski says the IRC will be looking at ways to help those most in need, whether they are waiting for transportation home or lack the means to return.
The International Rescue Committee has aid teams ready to assist people fleeing violence in Libya should a refugee crisis evolve. "We're watching the situation in Libya and surrounding areas very closely," says Gillian Dunn, the head of IRC emergency response operations.
Increased attention and resources are needed to protect and aid civilians JUBA - Increasing displacement from violence and a steady stream of Southern Sudanese returning home ahead of the 9 January referendum on secession are straining communities already facing dire shortages of food, water, health care and sanitation. “We have an unfolding humanitarian crisis, layered on top of an existing and forsaken one,” says Susan Purdin, the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) country director in Southern Sudan.
Juba, 8 December 2010 — An International Rescue Committee medical team is delivering health care services to more than 3,500 newly displaced people, mostly women and children, who took refuge in Northern Bahr el Ghazal after their villages along the north-south border were hit by Sudanese Army bombers. The displaced started crossing into North Aweil after the attack on November 12 and have been arriving in waves at a makeshift camp in the town of Jaac — following a nearly two day journey across rivers and through thick forest.
The world's success or failure on Sudan will be judged by the next few months
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is teaming up with Management Sciences for Health (MSH), the global nonprofit health development organisation, to respond to the relief effort in Haiti. The IRC and MSH previously worked together in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake and in Southern Sudan, to restore the health system following the end of the 20-year civil war there. The joint IRC-MSH efforts in Haiti will focus on displaced people and on communities that were hit hard by the 12 January earthquake, as well as communities that are hosting homeless victims of the disaster.
The International Rescue Committee is distributing emergency food rations, tents and household items to families affected by last week’s devastating earthquake on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Working through partner organization Leuser, a student volunteer association based in the Sumatran city of Banda Aceh, the IRC is focusing its response on the outskirts of the coastal city of Pariaman, the hardest hit by the earthquake. The 7.6-magnitude earthquake started at sea on September 30 and quickly rippled through Sumatra, the westernmost island in the Indonesian archipelago.
Nairobi Nine international aid agencies, including the International Rescue Committee, have highlighted the "urgent need for separation between humanitarian and political efforts in Somalia" in a letter to John Holmes, the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs with the United Nations (UN) in Somalia.
