In the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis and the most recent devastating terrorist attacks, most recently devastating Paris, Beirut and Baghdad, international aids and charities work harder to provide care and relief to many people affected.

Close to 250,000 people have been killed in fighting in the Syrian conflict, while four million people have fled the country to seek safety elsewhere. Most live in refugee camps or in appalling conditions in neighbouring towns and cities. Many families have been driven by desperation to take incredible risks to try to reach safety in Europe.

Terrorist attacks, like those in Beirut, Baghdad and Paris, kill and injure a staggering number of people and leave them displaced. Tragedies and crises like these need help in medical emergencies, such as blood donations, personnel volunteers and medical supplies. Food and meals also may become scarce in the areas affected, so donations made to charities that cater to this are helpful.

Foundations for devastated areas

CARE International UK, a charity set up to meet people’s basic needs such as food, water and shelter, continues to save lives in emergencies by giving those displaced by war access to health services, as well as working to find long-term solutions to poverty and injustice.

From the end of the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of food packages were sent to different urgently needing locations under the US Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe program set up in 1945. That same program has become the charity CARE International, which operates in 75 developing countries across the world.

CARE has been working in the same manner, in light of the recent terrorist attacks. They have also pushed their efforts inside Syria to establish healthcare facilities and training, and helping to rebuild the country’s shattered economy through entrepreneurship programs to provide some semblance of normal life that refugees might one day return to.

CARE is also working in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey and throughout Europe by providing food, medical supplies, shelter, blankets and warm clothing. With winter coming, the situation is becoming increasingly urgent and the emergency assistance provided by CARE is as vitally needed now as it was 70 years ago. Bustle has also listed several foundations and entities that are helping in the recent attacks, and the other humanitarian crisis plaguing the world.

Refugees and deplorable condition

Women and children among the refugees face a high risk of violence and sexual abuse, the UN warned. The UN refugee agency said that more than a third of the more than 600,000 refugees who have arrived in Europe this year are women and children, and warned that they are "particularly subject to abuse."

"We are raising the alarm bell," spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said, pointing to numerous testimonies about sexual violence at overcrowded reception sites, for instance on the Greek island of Lesbos where reception centres are buckling under the arrivals of thousands of people daily.

Many refugees are also forced to camp out in the open, in parks and along roadsides, or in train stations, where women and children are also especially vulnerable to abuse, she said. Perhaps most worryingly, she warned, some children appeared to be engaging in "survival sex" to pay smugglers to continue their journey, either because they have ran out of money, or because they have been robbed en route.

Women’s and children’s rights advocate Lalita Janke, who is also board president of the US National Committee for UN Women, called for awareness accompanied with action, especially for fellow women in the United States.

“Women in the States sometimes forget what happens in other countries. Living with emotional, educational poverty, poverty of hopelessness and despair is often greater than financial poverty,” Janke said.

“We in ‘advanced’ societies need to see that joining a group gives all of us strength and we together make a difference for ourselves, our daughters and our sisters across the ocean. We can all talk about things in the safety of our worlds but to risk and challenge ourselves is hard but worth the fight,” she added.

Lalita and her husband Dr Walter Janke run the Walter and Lalita Janke Charitable Foundation, which advocates for the rights of women and youth, and are against the use of any and all forms of violence against women and girls .

The UN is urging for more organisations like Janke’s and for governments to place in measures that will protect the refugees, most especially the women and children. The refugee agency also urged the governments to find ways to prevent families from being separated, as women and girls on their own face enhanced risks.

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