On Thursday, EU commissioner Janez Lenarčič, within his role as crisis coordinator of the European Union’s response, arrived in Turkey to meet with the Vice-President of Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management. Thursday’s meeting will also include members from cross-border humanitarian partners from Northwest Syria.
Via a press release, the EU has outlined their support to Syria as follows:
After yesterday’s activation of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for Syria, the EU’s Emergency Response Coordination Centre is closely coordinating with EU Member States and the Mechanism’s Participating States to channel emergency assistance to the Syrian people as rapidly as possible. Italy and Romania have already made first offers including, family tents, sleeping bags, mattresses, beds, food items, winter clothing, and more. Today, on 9 February, the World Food Programme has requested assistance via the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to support the affected people in Syria. This will allow further EU aid to be channelled.
Since 2011, the EU and its combined member states have been the largest donors of humanitarian aid for Syria, having donated a total of €27 billion. In response Monday’s earthquake, the EU has provided €3.5 million in emergency funding to address urgent needs including water and sanitation, funding for shelter, non-food items as well as search and rescue.
The press release also outlined support for Turkey:
Latest support includes, the mobilisation of the rescEU strategic reserves to deliver 500 temporary accommodation units, 2,000 tents, and 10,500 beds to Türkiye from its emergency stockpiles hosted by Sweden and Romania. The tents can provide rapid relief, hosting 4 people each, while the prefabricated temporary housing units can host up to 5 people each and are designed to offer emergency shelter to people who lost their homes in the earthquake for a longer period. The financial value of the rescEU assistance is nearly €5 million.
The above mentioned support for Turkey is aid offered in addition to 38 rescue and medical teams provided via the EU civil protection mechanism from the 21 EU member states together with Albania, Montenegro and Serbia.
According to the EU more than 16,50 rescuers along with over 100 search dogs have been deployed to the most affected areas in Turkey. As of now, 36 people have been successfully rescued by teams deployed by the Mechanism.
