With hearts heavy with grief and sorrow, we mourn our loved ones. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, friends, and companions on the path of those who perished in an earthquake that was recorded as one of the largest natural disasters in the current era. We mourn the families and families of detainees and forcibly disappeared people who died under the rubble before seeing the faces of their loved ones and revealing their fate. They died and have not yet recovered from the consequences of arrest, enforced disappearance and displacement.
We have lost entire families that we had hoped would survive had it not been for the failure of all international parties to respond to the earthquake crisis and had it not been for the Syrian regime seeking to exploit our tragedy; restricting relief.
We feel shocked by the inaction of the international community and the opportunism of local parties; all this should not divert attention from the urgent need for an emergency response commensurate with the scale of the disaster. In order to rectify what can be rectified, the international community is still required to move immediately, now and before it is too late, across the borders to contribute to the rescue work and to deliver the necessary equipment and supplies to the local teams working on ground.
The International humanitarian organizations and civil society organizations all over the world are still required to put pressure on decision-makers and raise their voices in order to save those who can still be saved and provide relief to those affected and are already suffering the consequences of a complex conflict that has been going on for 12 years.