SHATILA, Lebanon: In Beirut’s impoverished Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila — a maze of alleyways where posters honor fallen martyrs — residents expressed joy Wednesday after three European countries said they would recognize a Palestinian state.
“We hope that the whole world will recognize Palestine, and we are happy with this decision... It is a beautiful feeling,” said Alaa Ghozlan, 26, whose family is originally from Haifa, now in northern Israel.
“We now have hope to return to our country — a country I was not born in and was deprived of but which lives inside me despite everything,” he told AFP on a winding street in the camp.
Israel was enraged by the move announced Wednesday by Ireland, Norway and Spain, arguing that it amounts to “rewarding terrorism” after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the bloodiest ever Gaza war.
Seven other European countries including Sweden have already recognized Palestinian statehood.
Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, many living in poverty in the country’s 12 official camps, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Most are descendants of survivors of what Palestinians call the Nakba — the “catastrophe” — when about 760,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.
Shatila resident Samah Omari, 50, a housewife, said she was “very happy” with the decision, and expressed hope that it would eventually impact her and her family.
“People are dying in Palestine. We demand our rights and defend our land so that our state can be recognized by all countries,” she said.
“We hope to return to our country and not be refugees anymore,” she added.
The camp’s tumbledown walls are adorned with Palestinian flags and posters in support of militant groups including Hamas and their leaders.
Men on motorbikes and tuk-tuks squeeze past women shopping and schoolchildren making their way through the streets.
Above, matted electricity wires and plastic water tubes are bound precariously with rope or cables, some weighed down by clothes that have fallen from washing lines.
The United States and most Western European nations have said they are willing to one day recognize Palestinian statehood, but not before agreement is reached on thorny issues like final borders and the status of Jerusalem.
But Israel’s war against Hamas militants in Gaza, with its mounting death toll, has given the issue new impetus.
Suliman Abdel Hadi, 70, an official at the camp, said the timing of the decision was “important after October 7 because of the massacres carried out by the brutal Zionist enemy.”
“We see a bright future for the Palestinian cause,” said Abdel Hadi, whose family is from the Acre area, now in northern Israel.
“What happened today is the result of sacrifices made by the Palestinian people over 76 years of persecution, killing and destruction,” he added.
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Militants also took 252 hostages, 124 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,709 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
On another street in Shatila, a man who gave his name as Abu Majdi, and whose father originally hailed from Haifa, called the decision “great” and said it was “baptised in the blood of martyrs.”
“This recognition will change the future of coming generations and the future of the Palestinian cause,” said the 63-year-old man, a Palestine pendant hanging from his neck.
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Joy in Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut as European trio advances cause
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Joy in Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut as European trio advances cause
- “We hope that the whole world will recognize Palestine, and we are happy with this decision... It is a beautiful feeling,” said Alaa Ghozlan
- Israel was enraged by the move announced Wednesday by Ireland, Norway and Spain, arguing that it amounts to “rewarding terrorism”
Sudan named most neglected crisis of 2025 in aid agency poll
LONDON: The humanitarian catastrophe engulfing Sudan, unleashing horrific violence on children and uprooting nearly a quarter of the population, is the world’s most neglected crisis of 2025, according to a poll of aid agencies.
Some 30 million Sudanese people – roughly equivalent to Australia’s population — need assistance, but experts warn that warehouses are nearly empty, aid operations face collapse and two cities have tipped into famine.
“The Sudan crisis should be front page news every single day,” said Save the Children humanitarian director Abdurahman Sharif.
“Children are living a nightmare in plain sight, yet the world continues to shamefully look away.”
Sudan was named by a third of respondents in a Thomson Reuters Foundation crisis poll of 22 leading aid organizations.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), widely considered the deadliest conflict since World War Two, ranked second.
Although Sudan has received some media attention, Sharif said the true scale of the catastrophe remained “largely out of sight and out of mind.”
The United Nations has called Sudan the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, but a $4.16 billion appeal is barely a third funded.
The poll’s respondents highlighted a number of overlooked emergencies, including Myanmar, Afghanistan, Somalia, Africa’s Sahel region and Mozambique.
Many agencies said they were reluctant to single out just one crisis in a year when the United States and other Western donors slashed aid despite soaring humanitarian needs.
“It feels as though the world is turning its back on humanity,” said Oxfam’s humanitarian director Marta Valdes Garcia.
’INDICTMENT OF HUMANITY’
The conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which erupted out of a power struggle in April 2023, has created the world’s largest displacement crisis with 12 million people fleeing their homes.
Aid groups cited appalling human rights violations, including child cruelty, rape and conscription.
“What is being done to Sudan’s children is unconscionable, occurring on a massive scale and with apparent impunity,” said World Vision’s humanitarian operations director Moussa Sangara.
Hospitals and schools have been destroyed or occupied, and 21 million people face acute hunger.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that without additional funds it will have to cut rations for communities in famine or at risk.
Aid organizations say violence, blockades and bureaucratic obstacles are making it hard to reach civilians in conflict zones.
“What we are witnessing in Sudan is nothing short of an indictment of humanity,” said the UN refugee agency’s regional director Mamadou Dian Balde.
“If the world does not urgently step up — diplomatically, financially, and morally — an already catastrophic situation will deteriorate further with millions of Sudanese and their neighbors paying the price.”
’BREAKING POINT’
South Sudan and Chad, both hosting large numbers of Sudanese refugees, were also flagged in the survey.
Charlotte Slente, head of the Danish Refugee Council, said Chad – a country already dealing with deep poverty and hunger exacerbated by the climate crisis — was being pushed “to breaking point.”
“Chad’s solidarity with the refugees is a lesson for the world’s wealthiest nations. That generosity is being met by global moral failure,” Slente said.
In South Sudan, Oxfam said donors were pulling out, forcing aid agencies to cut crucial support for millions of people.
’HELLSCAPE FOR WOMEN’
Several organizations sounded the alarm over escalating conflict in DRC.
Around 7 million people are displaced and 27 million face hunger in the vast resource-rich country, where rape has been used as a weapon of war through decades of conflict.
“This is the biggest humanitarian emergency that the world isn’t talking about,” said Christian Aid’s chief executive Patrick Watt.
On a recent visit, he said villagers told him how armed groups had stolen livestock, torched homes, recruited boys to fight and subjected women and girls to terrifying sexual violence.
Rwandan-backed M23 rebels seized a swathe of eastern Congo this year in their bid to topple the government in Kinshasa. Fighting has continued despite a US-led peace deal signed this month by DRC and Rwanda.
DRC’s conflict has intensified amid soaring global demand for minerals needed for clean energy technologies, smartphones and more.
Watt said people now face economic disaster due to Kinshasa’s blockade on M23-controlled areas and aid cuts that have hollowed out the humanitarian response.
ActionAid said the violence had “created a hellscape” for women, while the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) called Congo “a case study of global neglect.”
“This neglect is not an accident: it is a choice,” said NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher named Myanmar as the most neglected crisis, describing it as “a billion-dollar emergency running on fumes.”
A $1.1 billion appeal for the southeast Asian country is only 17 percent funded despite mass displacement, rising hunger and rampant violence.
Although donors raced to help after Myanmar’s massive earthquake in March, Fletcher said the world had turned away from the “grinding crisis” underneath.
“Myanmar is becoming invisible,” he said.
Some 30 million Sudanese people – roughly equivalent to Australia’s population — need assistance, but experts warn that warehouses are nearly empty, aid operations face collapse and two cities have tipped into famine.
“The Sudan crisis should be front page news every single day,” said Save the Children humanitarian director Abdurahman Sharif.
“Children are living a nightmare in plain sight, yet the world continues to shamefully look away.”
Sudan was named by a third of respondents in a Thomson Reuters Foundation crisis poll of 22 leading aid organizations.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), widely considered the deadliest conflict since World War Two, ranked second.
Although Sudan has received some media attention, Sharif said the true scale of the catastrophe remained “largely out of sight and out of mind.”
The United Nations has called Sudan the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, but a $4.16 billion appeal is barely a third funded.
The poll’s respondents highlighted a number of overlooked emergencies, including Myanmar, Afghanistan, Somalia, Africa’s Sahel region and Mozambique.
Many agencies said they were reluctant to single out just one crisis in a year when the United States and other Western donors slashed aid despite soaring humanitarian needs.
“It feels as though the world is turning its back on humanity,” said Oxfam’s humanitarian director Marta Valdes Garcia.
’INDICTMENT OF HUMANITY’
The conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which erupted out of a power struggle in April 2023, has created the world’s largest displacement crisis with 12 million people fleeing their homes.
Aid groups cited appalling human rights violations, including child cruelty, rape and conscription.
“What is being done to Sudan’s children is unconscionable, occurring on a massive scale and with apparent impunity,” said World Vision’s humanitarian operations director Moussa Sangara.
Hospitals and schools have been destroyed or occupied, and 21 million people face acute hunger.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that without additional funds it will have to cut rations for communities in famine or at risk.
Aid organizations say violence, blockades and bureaucratic obstacles are making it hard to reach civilians in conflict zones.
“What we are witnessing in Sudan is nothing short of an indictment of humanity,” said the UN refugee agency’s regional director Mamadou Dian Balde.
“If the world does not urgently step up — diplomatically, financially, and morally — an already catastrophic situation will deteriorate further with millions of Sudanese and their neighbors paying the price.”
’BREAKING POINT’
South Sudan and Chad, both hosting large numbers of Sudanese refugees, were also flagged in the survey.
Charlotte Slente, head of the Danish Refugee Council, said Chad – a country already dealing with deep poverty and hunger exacerbated by the climate crisis — was being pushed “to breaking point.”
“Chad’s solidarity with the refugees is a lesson for the world’s wealthiest nations. That generosity is being met by global moral failure,” Slente said.
In South Sudan, Oxfam said donors were pulling out, forcing aid agencies to cut crucial support for millions of people.
’HELLSCAPE FOR WOMEN’
Several organizations sounded the alarm over escalating conflict in DRC.
Around 7 million people are displaced and 27 million face hunger in the vast resource-rich country, where rape has been used as a weapon of war through decades of conflict.
“This is the biggest humanitarian emergency that the world isn’t talking about,” said Christian Aid’s chief executive Patrick Watt.
On a recent visit, he said villagers told him how armed groups had stolen livestock, torched homes, recruited boys to fight and subjected women and girls to terrifying sexual violence.
Rwandan-backed M23 rebels seized a swathe of eastern Congo this year in their bid to topple the government in Kinshasa. Fighting has continued despite a US-led peace deal signed this month by DRC and Rwanda.
DRC’s conflict has intensified amid soaring global demand for minerals needed for clean energy technologies, smartphones and more.
Watt said people now face economic disaster due to Kinshasa’s blockade on M23-controlled areas and aid cuts that have hollowed out the humanitarian response.
ActionAid said the violence had “created a hellscape” for women, while the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) called Congo “a case study of global neglect.”
“This neglect is not an accident: it is a choice,” said NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher named Myanmar as the most neglected crisis, describing it as “a billion-dollar emergency running on fumes.”
A $1.1 billion appeal for the southeast Asian country is only 17 percent funded despite mass displacement, rising hunger and rampant violence.
Although donors raced to help after Myanmar’s massive earthquake in March, Fletcher said the world had turned away from the “grinding crisis” underneath.
“Myanmar is becoming invisible,” he said.
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