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I’m a Syrian women’s rights activist and I want to tell you about the town of Daraya.
Every minute, every hour, the 8,500 people trapped in the town are inching closer to starvation. We need food and medicine to reach them before the unthinkable happens. We are asking for aid to be sent to the town immediately, and if it can’t be driven there, then it must be airdropped from the sky. The people with the power to do this are your politicians. They won’t listen to us, but you have influence over them. Please sign an urgent petition to the UK parliament now: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/117658 I know what it’s like to experience hunger. I lived under siege in Eastern Ghouta in Damascus for two and a half years. Still, compared to Daraya now, our situation was a blessing. We were able to grow some vegetables to survive. We would grind animal feed and mix it with water to make ‘bread’. But in Daraya they don’t have anything. I last spoke to people in Daraya two days ago to see what their needs were. The men listed the usual items like protein-rich food, and medicine and vaccines. But the needs of the women were very specific and detailed. Their daily struggles are different. They don’t have sanitary pads. They use cloths instead but then there’s no clean water to sanitise the cloths afterwards. They need lice shampoo and soap. They need milk and milk bottles to be sent in for their babies.They can’t breastfeed because they’re malnourished. I’m seven months pregnant now and I think about the women and kids in Daraya constantly. The woman who runs our network’s centre in Daraya has had two miscarriages during the siege due to malnutrition and lack of medical care. One was at three months and the other one was at six months. We can do something. I don’t want us a few weeks from now to be crying over images of people who have starved to death and say “I wish we had done something before”. The time is now. Please sign a petition to the UK parliament to airdrop food into Daraya today: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/117658 Thank you, Lubna Women Now for Development “SFD” (known previously as Soriyat For Development) is a Syrian non-profit organization dedicated to deepening and strengthening women’s role in Syrian and host communities by enhancing their political, social, economic and cultural participation. Read a letter to the world from Daraya's women here: https://diary.thesyriacampaign.org/an-urgent-call-from-the-women-of-the-besieged-town-of-daraya/ Comments are closed.
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