‘A Moment of Grave Peril’
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Nearly one year after the Trump administration spearheaded a global cutback in foreign assistance, beleaguered aid groups are now scrambling to respond to the humanitarian fallout of the widening war against Iran.
The U.S.-Israel war on Iran has reverberated across the Middle East and sent shock waves rippling across global supply chains and markets. As the war continues with no signs of ending, aid workers and humanitarian organizations are increasingly sounding the alarm on how the conflict is driving mass displacement and straining relief efforts and health systems.
Nearly one year after the Trump administration spearheaded a global cutback in foreign assistance, beleaguered aid groups are now scrambling to respond to the humanitarian fallout of the widening war against Iran.
The U.S.-Israel war on Iran has reverberated across the Middle East and sent shock waves rippling across global supply chains and markets. As the war continues with no signs of ending, aid workers and humanitarian organizations are increasingly sounding the alarm on how the conflict is driving mass displacement and straining relief efforts and health systems.
“I do think this is a moment of grave peril right now,” Tom Fletcher, the United Nations aid chief, said at a press briefing at the U.N. headquarters earlier in March.
“We’re seeing these crises escalate rapidly with consequences that are out of control for those instigating the conflict, and we’re seeing increasing linkages between these different humanitarian crises—none of them good,” he said.
The fighting is deepening humanitarian crises and intensifying pressures on already-overstretched aid agencies in the region. In Iran alone, there had reportedly been more than 1,300 deaths and 9,000 injuries by March 11, according to the World Health Organization; the Lebanese Health Ministry estimated on March 16 that at least 886 people had been killed and more than 2,000 injured as the war spread to Lebanon.
Even before the war, Iran was home to one of the world’s biggest refugee populations, particularly for people forcibly displaced from Iraq and Afghanistan, and fears of a potential migration crisis have only intensified in recent weeks. The United Nations estimates that........
