Children fleeing Sri Lanka conflict zone in need of help
More than 50,000 children who have escaped the conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka are in desperate need of immediate assistance, Save the Children warns.
Thursday 23 April 2009
Tens of thousands of vulnerable children are still trapped inside the conflict zone in Vanni in the north east of the country. Save the Children fears they may not have enough food or water and many of them are in desperate need of medical care. They continue to face the risk of being caught in the cross-fire and recruited by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam.
Save the Children reminds all sides in the conflict of the urgent need to protect civilians.
“The children who have been fortunate enough to flee the conflict are distressed by what they have experienced" said Prasant Naik, Save the Children’s Country Director for Sri Lanka.
“They have been displaced many times, faced constant shelling, seen their relatives and friends killed. The next few days are crucial as more people who are trapped in the conflict zone are expected to come out in large numbers.”
More than 100,000 people — including 50,000 children — have been able to escape the conflict zone since the beginning of this year — the majority in the past few days.
Save the Children, which has more than 30 year’s experience of working in Sri Lanka, is providing thousands of children and their families living in temporary camps with clothes, bedding, hygiene kits and other essential items, and has set up emergency pre-schools. Save the Children is running “child-friendly spaces” to provide a safe place for children to play and to help them forget what they have experienced.
Save the Children has also been registering separated and unaccompanied children in order to reunite them with their families.
“We are doing everything we can to support these children and their families and will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come,” Mr Naik said.
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