Nearly 80% of malnourished children are still not receiving the treatment they need to recover. A simpler, community-centered system could reach millions more children.
50 million children around the world suffer from acute malnutrition, and nearly 18 million of those children live in conflict and crisis-affected contexts in which the IRC operates [1]. For children, being malnourished can lead to a range of health problems and can be fatal — when severely malnourished, their risk of death increases up to eleven-fold. A cure exists — a package of peanut-based paste, delivered through daily doses over a few months — but the system to deliver it is inefficient, making treatment inaccessible for 80% of the children who need it. …
How the Airbel Impact Lab is focusing our efforts in a shifting landscape
With 79.5 million people displaced around the world, we were already facing an unprecedented crisis before COVID-19 hit. Already before the pandemic, crucial, life-saving interventions weren’t reaching enough people. Too many children don’t have access to quality education. And many suffer from malnutrition, likely facing irreversible damage to their physical and mental development. Pregnant women and newborns are dying of preventable causes at alarming rates in crisis-affected contexts. …
The IRC and the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School are excited to announce the spring 2021 cohort of fellows. Supported by the Arnhold Foundation, master’s and doctoral students at The New School have the opportunity to contribute or lead design and research projects at the IRC, at headquarters and in the field.
Since 2017, fellows have worked at the IRC on a range of teams including policy, innovation, research, health, governance, and emergency response. Fellows have a wide range of experience, and come from the Parsons School of Design, School of Nonprofit and Public Management…
Each year, Airbel Middle East scopes one area that we feel could make a significant contribution to the humanitarian sector. The goal is to better understand the challenges, and identify whether there are areas in which we could develop solutions that have the potential to be transformative. This year, we’re focusing on local manufacturing because of the critical need identified for personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical devices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 in northwest Syria
After 9 years of conflict, Syria is facing the COVID-19 pandemic with a health care system in ruins, and millions of people displaced by conflict…
Strengthening protection and reintegration for children in the Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo
February 12th marks Red Hand Day, the global campaign to stop the use of child soldiers. The recruitment and use of children by armed forces and armed groups has detrimental consequences for children and their families. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated ongoing crises across the world, deepening economic divides and sparking and further entrenching conflict and civil strife. At a time when much of the world is focused on the pandemic, we need to strengthen ways to better support families and protect children in conflict — the need is more urgent now than ever.
“We are really concerned about the…
Throughout our careers in public health, we have both maintained a strong passion for furthering the global agenda on improving maternal and newborn health. If we can’t protect women who are bringing life into this world and their vulnerable babies, our community is failing.
We know a person is most at risk of dying at the time of birth. We also know that good maternal and newborn health is linked to childhood health and nutrition outcomes and can have lifelong implications on physical and cognitive development. For those reasons, maternal and newborn health also impacts the work of our colleagues…
No matter how connected you are, everyone should have access to learning opportunities
In one of the most unprecedented events of the 21st century, the world has been forced to change dramatically under a new health threat: the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. In humanitarian settings, the pandemic has introduced severe logistical challenges to delivering aid and services to the world’s most vulnerable. For instance, in Colombia, all in-person education programs have closed their doors to students since April 2020, and they are not expected to reopen until early 2021. Current figures show that there are 12.9 million learners out of school in the country. In 2019, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) identified over 9,000…
The IRC and The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School are excited to announce the fall 2020 cohort of fellows. Supported by the Arnhold Foundation, master’s and doctoral students at The New School have the opportunity to contribute or lead design and research projects at the IRC, at headquarters, and in the field.
Since 2017, fellows have worked at the IRC on a range of teams including policy, innovation, research, health, governance, and emergency response. …
Applying the gold standard of research to innovative programming in a refugee context
Introduction
In 2017, the International Rescue Committee approached one of the biggest problems facing the more than 650,000 Syrian refugees living in Jordan: the inability to find employment and generate a sustainable livelihood while waiting to return to their homes.
The Government of Jordan has shown, and continues to show, great support for the refugees it hosts, and international aid agencies have developed truly creative approaches to the problem. One of the most visible new solutions has been the Jordan Compact of 2016, which was meant to increase formal employment for Syrians and Jordanians, but has had only partial success.
With more children out of school than ever, autonomous learning has the potential to give children a sense of stability and continuity of learning.
For four months, Ruma got up every morning, met the IRC staff at 9 am, grabbed her eight tablets fully charged for the day, and oversaw three learning sessions with different groups of children in her own home. “I have two children in the program. I became a facilitator to help them learn and to help other children learn,” said Ruma, a 23-year-old mother of three children living in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Together, they would start their session by singing a song or playing a game and then open their tablets and learn quietly for…
The Airbel Impact Lab
The research and innovation arm of the International Rescue Committee
