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Louis Michel to visit the Middle
East to assess the humanitarian situation
Louis Michel, the EU's Commissioner
for Development and Humanitarian Aid, will visit the
Middle East from April 25-29 taking in Israel, the
Palestinian Territories, Jordan and Syria. He will
assess, at first hand, the humanitarian situation in the
region which hosts one of the biggest refugee and
displaced population in the world. He will notably visit
camps of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees. He will also
have discussions with the Commission's implementing
partners in the provision of relief assistance. He will
also meet leading politicians in the region and deliver
a speech on the humanitarian dimension of the
Middle-East Peace Process at a conference on
humanitarian issues.
Louis Michel will visit humanitarian
projects funded by the Commission and will take stock of
the situation with the various partners on the ground.
The first part of the visit will be
dedicated to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The
Commissioner will visit humanitarian projects in the
West Bank and meet victims of the conflict. He will also
meet Mr Azzam Al-Ahmad, the Deputy Prime Minister of the
Palestinian Authority, and Mrs Tzipi Livni, the Israeli
Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs to
explore ways of making progress on addressing
humanitarian issues.
He will also participate in a conference in Jerusalem on
international humanitarian law that will bring together
the main humanitarian donors and actors in the region.
Mr Michel will then travel to Jordan
and Syria where he will visit Commission-funded
humanitarian projects, including Palestinian refugee
camps and areas accommodating Iraqis who have fled from
the violence in their own country. It is estimated that
around 3.8 million Iraqi citizens have left their
country or are internally displaced because of the
violence. This represents the biggest movement of
population in the region since World War II. In Syria,
Commissioner Michel will meet with President Bashar
Al-Assad.
The European Union is the world’s
leading donor to the Middle East. The EU’s solidarity
with the victims of the Palestinian and Iraq crises is
revealed in the scale of its aid. Since 2000, the
European Commission alone has provided more than €333
million in humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, on top
of its Development assistance. It has also recently
allocated €10.2 million of relief aid for victims of the
Iraq crisis.
The Commission's relief assistance,
channelled through ECHO, its Humanitarian Aid
department, has enabled partner agencies (NGO, UN and
Red Cross/Crescent) to implement more than 500 projects
in the region. The priorities are food, health,
water/sanitation, job creation and protection.
For more information, see:
http://ec.europa.eu/echo/field/gaza/index_en.htm
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