Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) recently organised two courses to build the capacity of relief workers involved in Syria in the field of child malnutrition treatment and human rights in the International Humanitarian Law and Islamic Shariah.
In co-ordination with the food cluster in northern Syria, led by the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the QRCS mission in Turkey held a course for trainers on Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM).
The course was attended by 30 co-ordinators, project managers and medics from 17 humanitarian agencies in northern Syria. They were trained in methods and techniques of treating children with acute malnutrition, as well as how to make an effective medical intervention on the ground.
The five-day course was held at the headquarters of the Awraq Community Development Organisation, Gaziantep, with funding from QRCS. It was conducted in Arabic and English, and certificates and material were shared with the participants.
The purpose of the course was to prepare CMAM trainers, which is crucial to treat child malnutrition at QRCS centres. The trainers will later share their skills and knowledge with field practitioners, including types, factors, clinical symptoms and classification of acute malnutrition.
In parallel, another course was organised in co-ordination with Afaq Academy, including nine lectures on the International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law and their link with the teachings of Islamic Shariah.
The two-day course was attended by 20 trainees from QRCS and Syrian NGOs working in Gaziantep.
The participants received useful basic information about the International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law and the Islamic perspective to both.
The lectures were delivered by Dr Saad Rostom, manager of the International Humanitarian Law and Islamic Shariah Promotion Project, as well as Dr Osama al-Shorbagi and Malik Nasser from Afaq Academy.
Certificates of participation and course material were shared with the attendees.
These course are part of QRCS’s efforts to support the Syrian people in their protracted calamity, whether in terms of relief (food/non-food aid, medicines, blankets, tarpaulins, ambulances and rehabilitation of camps hit by fire or snow), development (building clay houses, establishing and operating health centres, providing fuel for civil defence vehicles, opening humanitarian corridors, securing water trucks in residential neighbourhoods, installing water networks and heaters at camps), or humanitarian diplomacy and advocacy (organising and participating in conferences and events to raise awareness among the international community about the serious humanitarian conditions of Syrians in their own country and in neighbouring places such as Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.