Good humanitarian news makes its way in 2023 amid disasters and conflicts

Organizations admit that it has not been an easy year, but they also speak of "hope", with progress in different areas and contexts

MADRID, 30 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

This year, international information has been monopolized by conflict situations, natural disasters and Human Rights violations, but far from the spotlight there are also advances and milestones that UN agencies and NGOs want to highlight, in an invitation to optimism. Looking ahead to 2024, they also hope to continue taking steps to benefit the most vulnerable population.

From Save the Children, the person responsible for the Political Advocacy of International Programs in Spain, Arantxa Oses, believes that "in such a complex year on the international level" it seems that it is "somewhat impossible" to find something good, taking into account that conflicts such as The Gaza Strip are "overwhelming the world" and there are "numerous" other hotspots such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Mali or Ukraine in the background.

But there is also "hope." Oses gives as an example the increase in ratifications of the Declaration on Safe Schools - 118 countries have already joined - or that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has adopted legal guidelines to defend that children can live in a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, an advance in protection against the "threat".

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) places the focus on the "historic milestone" that has represented the expansion of vaccination against malaria in the highest risk areas of Africa - Cameroon received more than 330,000 doses -, since, as the head of International Programs at UNICEF Spain, Blanca Carazo, recalls, it is one of the main causes of mortality among children under five years of age, along with pneumonia and diarrhea.

"If having a new vaccine is always great news, being able to protect millions of African boys and girls against malaria is undoubtedly a milestone in improving child survival and a reason for hope," he highlights, also recalling that Africa concentrates 95 percent of the cases. Now, the challenge is to ensure these vaccines reach all children and are incorporated into routine schedules, although Carazo has also called for maintaining prevention measures and training local health personnel.

Also in the field of health, pharmacist Christophe Perrin, from the access to essential medicines campaign of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), celebrates as a "huge success" that the pharmaceutical company Johnson

For her part, the spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Spain, María Jesús Vega, highlights the holding of the World Refugee Forum in mid-December in Switzerland, a meeting in which "there has been solidarity flowed" - more than 2.2 billion dollars were committed - and interest has been expressed "in supporting the reception, inclusion and integration of millions of people who have been forced to flee their countries to preserve his life and physical integrity." "Like any of us would do in his place," she adds.

In this forum, Vega explains, "they have talked about good practices, solutions, resources and proposals have been made for very specific contributions that will be implemented from 2023 and over the next four years."

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), also linked to the UN, has given as an example of good practices an agreement signed this year with the Afghanistan Leadership School (SOLA) so that young Afghan women who were left out of the system after promotion of the Taliban to power can continue studying in Rwanda, pursuing secondary and university studies.

Conflicts, recalls the communications director of World Vision, Eloisa Molina, also give rise to situations of "solidarity", as is the case in Ukraine, where women continue to play "a key role" in the protection of families "as fighting continues, bombs fall and cities are devastated.

Molina uses Yulia, mother of a six-year-old girl, as a banner of how a small work, in her case an initiative aimed at promoting associations to support scared children, can change lives. With a modest center, she teaches creative workshops with other volunteers to encourage fun and learning and provide children with "a space in which war is left behind the door."

In the year in which precisely 75 years have passed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, its violation in conflict situations has been a constant concern for organizations, but a spokesperson for Amnesty International, Ana Gómez Pérez-Nievas, believes that There are also reasons to "celebrate."

The measures to legalize abortion in Brazil and the North American state of Ohio, the elimination in Ghana of the death penalty for common crimes, the legal reforms in the Netherlands or Switzerland to classify sexual relations without consent as rape, the rejection of Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to the plan to deport migrants to Rwanda or the beginning of the trial for war crimes against the former president of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi fall, according to Gómez, in the category of good news for 2023.

"It is all this news that keeps us active in our fight, because we cannot let our guard down, but neither can we lose confidence that it is a battle that is worth it," he says.