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Faced with the humanitarian crises in Asia, our annual call for financial solidarity

Sunday 6 January 2019, by Pierre Rousset

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We need you to maintain the ESSF Solidarity Fund.

There is every reason to believe that humanitarian disasters will worsen in Asia. The “Ring of Fire” of the Pacific seems to have entered a period of strong activity (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami ...) - Indonesia (twice), Hong Kong and Japan in particular have been hit recently, the Philippines probably again soon.

Southeast Asia is one of the areas that is and will be hit hardest by the climate crisis, combining several of the most serious risk factors.

The effects of global warming, globalization, more or less latent states of war are combined to the point that in more than one place, the social fabric itself is torn apart.

For 13 years, our association has launched financial solidarity campaigns for victims of humanitarian disasters with multiple causes. It supports movements that, on the ground, mobilize to help them. If we persevere, it is that the experience confirms that our action is effective, on the short and the long term. In its own way, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has just confirmed it in a spectacular way!

In early November, a Supreme Court commission drew an extremely harsh assessment of the Pakistani administration’s action after the 2005 devastating earthquake on the Himalayan slopes. Thirteen years later, it notes, the affected population often lives in miserable conditions. International aid has been misused and has even been diverted. Considerable sums would have been transferred to various government agencies instead of being used for victims [1]

ESSF has sent 16,500 euros to the Labour Relief Committee [2]. Thanks to its local contacts and intense militant mobilization in the country, the LRC was able to benefit from other international financing, to collect funds (as well as goods in kind) in Pakistan, to directly distribute emergency aid to those in need, to build 100 houses in concrete (and not tents) before the coming of the winter (they are the only ones to have done it), to avoid that the fundamentalists or the State take total control of the solidarity and to think about the continuation of the support in the longer term [3]

The disastrous record described by the Pakistani Supreme Court unwillingly validates what we are fighting for: to develop the links between militant social movements from here and there so that the help reaches the victims as directly as possible, that costs are lowered as much as feasible, and that the affected populations are able to defend their rights at each stage of the rehabilitation and reconstruction process.

In 2018, ESSF sent aid through our partner organizations to Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Pakistan. We will publish early next year a review of these activities.

Solidarity with the victims of humanitarian disasters has to become a major area of activity for us today. It is essential for social movements and progressive parties to assume more broadly and more directly this responsibility than what is still the case today - in collaboration with ESSF if they so wish. Friends of ESSF, we would like you to invite, as far as possible, the movements where you are present to put this question on their agenda.

We wish to thank all those who by their donations enabled us to act in 2018, as well as past years,

We hope that you will be able to maintain your solidarity commitment in the future,

Pierre Rousset
ESSF, November 29, 2018

ESSF does not receive any subsidies. Its activities are carried out in a completely militant way, without any form of remuneration.

To send donations
Cheques
cheques to ESSF in euros only, payable in France, to be sent to:
ESSF
2, rue Richard-Lenoir
93100 Montreuil
France

Bank Account:
Crédit lyonnais
Agence de la Croix-de-Chavaux (00525)
10 boulevard Chanzy
93100 Montreuil
France
ESSF, account number 445757C

International bank account details :
IBAN : FR85 3000 2005 2500 0044 5757 C12
BIC / SWIFT : CRLYFRPP
Account holder : ESSF

Through PayPal

You can send money through Paypal: see the PayPal button on the upper right side of ESSF English home page: http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?page=sommaire&lang=en

Through HelloAsso

You can also send money through the association HelloAsso: see its button on the upper right side of ESSF English home page: http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?page=sommaire&lang=en
Or go directly to:
https://www.helloasso.com/associations/europe-solidaire-sans-frontieres/formulaires/1/widget

We keep you regularly informed via our website of the situation and use of the solidarity fund.

Footnotes

[1ESSF (Section 46783), Pakistan / Kashmir 13 years after: 2005 Quake victims still face hardship, Supreme Court told):
http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article46783.

[2ESSF (article 678), Emergency: Pakistan Solidarity):
http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article678

[3ESSF (article 1742), Report on Relief and Reconstruction Work in Earthquake Hit Areas in Kashmir:
http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article1742.