News

In January 2017, French photographer Philippe de Poulpiquet spent two weeks with HI’s teams in Jordan and Lebanon. Every day, they went out to visit Syrian refugees, including numerous victims of explosive weapons.

Handicap International has been testing whether computer assisted design and 3D printing can improve access to high-quality artificial limbs. As the first clinical trials in Togo, Madagascar and Syria conclude, we are pleased to announce positive results and the launch of the next phase of this cutting edge research. 

In December 2016, Harith suffered serious leg injuries in a rocket attack, in Mosul. Metal external fixations come out from Harith’s leg, testifying to the severity of his accident.

Jemerson, 12 years old, lives in Colombia in the town of Corinto, an area severely affected by the conflict which tore Colombia apart for fifty years. When he was 10 years old he lost his left hand after sustaining an injury from an antipersonnel landmine. Jemerson has been attending rehabilitation sessions with support from Handicap International. The child is hanging on and he still has hope.

A severe food crisis is advancing across East Africa, Nigeria and Yemen. In this interview, Xavier Duvauchelle, Handicap International’s desk officer for the East African region, explains the scale of the disaster and how our teams on the ground are responding.

Victims of the earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25^th, 2015, Nirmala and Khendo, both 10, had to be amputated. With the support of Handicap International, the two girls attended rehabilitation sessions and received prosthesis. Two years later, the girls make their way back to school.

The exodus from Mosul is intensifying. On February 19th, the military forces launched the second phase of their offensive to retake Mosul, in Iraq. Since then, over 150 000 people have fled the fighting in the western part of the city. The flow of IDPs increases, with an average of 9 000 newly displaced people every day.

In West Africa, millions of children don’t complete their primary education and some have never been to school. Humanity & Inclusion (HI) estimates that a third of these children have a disability. Our inclusive education program runs in nine countries[i] in the region and will ensure that 170,000 children have the opportunity to learn, play, make friends and feel valued in society.

There was a record increase in the number of casualties of mines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) in 2015, up 75% from 2014. This heavy toll was due to intensive and systematic bombing of populated areas in recent conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine. The vast majority of people killed and injured in these attacks were civilians. Founder of an international campaign to stop the bombing of civilians, Handicap International is once again calling for an immediate end to this practice and for the international community to condemn it in the strongest terms.

Kakuma Refugee Camp hosts more than 180,000 uprooted refugees who have fled wars and persecutions in neighboring countries. It is a massive 12 sq km camp, with 4 structured districts, 19 primary schools, and a hospital.

Twenty million people in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and northeastern Nigeria have been grappling with a serious food crisis since 2016. Several East African countries have been hit by drought in recent months, including Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, South Sudan and, to a lesser extent, Tanzania. In some countries, conflicts have caused severe food shortages. Handicap International is preparing to deal with one of the worst humanitarian crises since the Second World War.
 

Cyclone Enawo has passed through Madagascar and will end its course in the Anosy region (south-east). The authorities have reported severe damage caused not only by the cyclone itself but by the subsequent flooding it has caused. The national office of risk and disaster management is reporting 10,000 displaced persons and 52,000 people affected. Handicap International's teams have started to assess the population's needs.

Famine was declared in several regions of South Sudan last week: 4.5 million people, half of the country’s population, are surviving on what they ca--n find or facing starvation. Xavier Duvauchelle, head of the Eastern and Southern Africa Desk at Handicap International, explains more.
 

On the 8^th March each year, Handicap International celebrates International Women’s Day. Today is an opportunity for us to recognise the exceptional achievements of ordinary women around the world.

Four months after Hurricane Matthew made landfall in Haiti, many people still need humanitarian aid. Handicap International has distributed emergency kits and household items to a thousand homes, benefiting more than 4,700 disaster-affected people. The organisation has also transported more than 270 tonnes of humanitarian equipment to people living in remote areas.