I think I was born a doctor. Growing up in
Damascus, as a of‑year‑old, I remember
playing with my cousins and siblings, I insisted
on becoming the surgeon doing life saving
measures. My teachers tried to dissuade me
from applying to medical school, said my grades
weren't good enough and that perhaps I should
consider chemistry or biology.
I thought that was the most ridiculous thing
I've ever heard. Of course I was going to
be a doctor. They had clearly forgotten I
had only learned English two years earlier.
I applied and I trained as a doctor, specializing
in anesthesia and intensive care and had planned
for a career in global health development
in sub‑Saharan Africa, but life had other
plans for me.
I think war is one of these things that's
a bit like cancer. You never think it's going
to happen to you. It's always something that
happens to other people and you really only
know how devastating it is when it happens
to you or a loved one.
Syria for me is the smell of Jasmine on my
grandmother's balcony, it's walking through
the winding streets of Damascus with the smell
of spices, eating a falafel sandwich, or walking
in the west of the country with my family,
surrounded by olive and oak trees, but then
in 2011 the peaceful protests that were calling
for freedom and dignity were met with a bloody
crackdown and the war on civilians that you
all know of ensued, and now we have the biggest
humanitarian catastrophe our time. We only
thought it was going to last a few days or
few weeks at best, but 2012 was the worst
year for us, when over 30 members of my family
were killed and all our farms were burnt to
the ground. I was living in the UK at the
time training, working as a doctor, so I did
the only thing I knew I could and I joined
the humanitarian effort working with various
different Syrian‑led organizations and helped
to set up six hospitals in the north of the
country and dozens of clinics across the whole
country.
That was when I had another rude awakening,
I thought that it was the big agencies that
actually go around and save the world, but
though they do do good work, the actual reason
people survive in crisis is the people themselves,
the reason that people survive in crises is
because mothers grab the hands of their children
and walk them in the dead of night over dead
bodies for miles and miles to get them to
safety. The reason that people survive is
because of people like my colleague, Dr. Amina,
who delivers women on her kitchen floor because
there are no healthcare facilities left in
the area. The reason people survive is because
the diaspora of these nations turn up in droves,
it's the Syrians who help in Syria, it's the
Yemenese helping in Yemen, it's the Somalias
helping in Somalia. So researchers at global
to global did a study and found that in the
Syria context, 75% of the humanitarian work
is being carried out by Syrian charities.
75%. Now, hands up if you think we're getting
75% of the aid budget. 50%. 40%. 30%? You're
either very cynical or very well informed.
(laughter).
0.3% of the aid budget. I would like to show
you a short video of what this imbalance looks
like in reality the and lives it's costing.
This video is an excerpt from a documentary
we made a couple years ago called saving Syria's
children, BBC, filmed while I was on a medical
mission working at the time with a Syrian
organization I helped to set up called Hand
in Hand for Syria. During this trip I was
assessing the quality of our care and the
needs of the local population, and on this
day, we witnessed a war crime.
An airstrike had taken place and a school
was bombed and we had a massive influx of
severely burnt children coming to our hospital.
Now, I warn you, it is a bit of a hard watch,
but I hope you'll forgive me because of the
important point that I need to make.
>> A 7 month old baby boy has been brought
in with severe burns. No one is quite sure
what's happened.
>> Have you got a small cannula for a baby?
>> It's too big.
>> The baby cannula, this is too big.
>> Oh, oh, oh, oh.
(Baby crying).
>> Okay, this baby needs to be picked up.
Are you the dad? Are you the father?
>> I am.
>> Okay. You sit down. You hold the baby.
(Speaking language other than English).
>> This is crazy, half the kit I need I don't
have access to, everything is adult size.
(Siren).
>> Oh, oh, here we have someone else.
(Speaking other than English).
>> Some kind of airstrike seems to have taken
place. Most of the casualties are teenagers,
they're saying a bomb has landed in their
school playground.
>> Dozens of people that have just been rushed
in, covered in burns and some white powder
dust. Their clothes are hanging off them.
>> It's only five days since the chemical
attack in Damascus and everyone is terrified
that there's just been another one.
>> It's absolute chaos and carnage here, we've
had a massive influx of what looks like serious
burns, it seems like there must be some sort
of chemical weapon, I'm not sure.
>> We don't know what we're dealing with.
>> Casualties, and anyone who has touched
the victims are to be doused in water.
(Crowd noise).
>> Keep them coming in, barely begin to cope
inside here, there are a few beds, which are
why people are laid on the floor. One thing
that the camera will not tell you is the smell
in the air, it's a sickening smell of burning
flesh, it's an absolutely horrific scene,
staff are handing these out because they don't
know what happened and they think it may be
a chemical attack.
>> ROLA HALLAM: That day is etched on my heart
and on my mind and in my soul. There are so
many things that were wrong about that, so
many questions, like what has that pilot turned
off inside of them to look down at a schoolyard
full of children and press the destruct button?
Like where are all the world leaders in the
United Nations and everyone else who said
never again? Or the most devastating thing
for me that day was that that day I had trained
all my life for a day like that.
That day, I had the skills, the ability and
the knowledge to administer life‑saving
treatment. I should have been able to give
those children oxygen, sedation, pain killers,
I should have been able to put a breathing
tube, I should have been able to put them
on a ventilator and send them in a medically
escorted ambulance for the 20‑mile journey
it would take to get them to safety in Turkey.
But instead, I had to send them suffocating,
in excruciating pain in the back of their
parents' cars and ten of those kids you saw
on screen died that day because I, who could
have saved their lives, did not have any of
the resources and the tools and the equipment
that I needed.
Now, I would love to tell you that that's
just the situation in Syria, but this is a
global problem. Across the world, across all
the crises, it is the local humanitarians
who shoulder the burden of the aid, but we
get 1 to 2% of the aid budget. This has been
actually recognized at the highest levels,
so at the first United Nations world humanitarian
summit two years ago, one of the main targets
they said was that by 2020, 25% of the aid
budget should be going to local aid workers.
But unfortunately there are so few initiatives
happening to make that a reality and as a
result we are woefully off cost. Now, I admit,
that really messed with my head, I was so
angry and so furious and thought surely we
can do better.
So I went back to the drawing board and scratched
my head. I soon realized that this aid system
wasn't just broken at that end, it was broken
at our end too because we sit around the world
and these crises explode onto our screens
and into our lives, and we see the suffering
of our fellow human beings and we want to
help. We want to make a difference. We want
to contribute. We want to know where our money
is going, how much of it is arriving, what
good it's doing. But that mechanism isn't
there in place. And I think furthermore, because
there is such a disconnection between us and
these people in crisis, we only see them in
the news, we get the misperception that they
are just mere victims sitting there with their
hands out waiting for a handout and not the
courageous change makers that they truly are.
And so from this, CanDo was born. We are a
not‑for‑profit social enterprise determined
to provide healthcare to everyone in a war
zone by enabling the very people who can save
lives, the local doctors, nurses and aid workers.
So we've set up the first humanitarian crowdfunding
platform so we can bring their work out of
the shadows and into the light and into a
global platform and connect them with you
around the world, so that they can tell you
what urgent healthcare needs they have and
you can support the particular country, the
particular organization and the specific project
that you want know that go 100% of your money
is going directly to that project.
Now, I think that there are so many reasons
why we should support local humanitarians,
but I would like to talk about four more reasons.
Not only are they the first in the ongoing
responders, they dare to work where others
cannot or will not. So right now, across Syria,
there are nearly 1 million people who are
being besieged, slowly killed to death by
medieval tactics, no aid can enter, no agencies
working there, but the Syrian agencies are.
Last month one of our partners ran a successful
crowdfunding campaign to train mental health
care workers to provide severely traumatized
women with the techniques they need so they
can redevelop their resilience and continue.
They are reaching the most marginalized and
the most vulnerable of communities.
The second reason is grit. The resilience.
We do not give up. One of last November one
of our partners Independent Doctors Association
had their hospital in Aleppo bombed. Imagine
it was the sixth time that the children hospital
had been bombed? In fact, physicians for human
rights an American not‑for‑profit has
documented over 800 attacks in hospitals across
Syria since the beginning of the war, 90%
of it by the Syrian regime, the other 10%
by other actors and they say this has been
used as a premeditated systematic targeting
of healthcare using its destruction as a weapon
of war.
But they don't just bomb hospitals, they also
kill medics. Hundreds of my colleagues have
been killed. 40% of them under torture. One
of my colleagues, Dr. Ahmad, we had been
working together, I was in the UK, he was
in Damascus, we had done just a few projects
together, I was trying to support his medical
aid delivery and one day he was arrested by
the regime and severely tortured for nine
months and miraculously was one of the few
who left and he said for three months of his
torture, it was about me. I had never met
him. Our crime was upholding our hippocratic
oath and daring to treat patients who wherever
they are across the country. But we don't
give up.
So we worked with the Independent Doctors
Association and ran a crowdfunding campaign
for them last December after their Children's
Hospital was bombed because we wanted to rebuild
hospitals. We will not be stopped from doing
our life saving work. So we ran a campaign
called the Peoples Convoy so we can rebuild
the hospital and we did it. 5,000 people from
over 10 countries raised an amazing quarter
of a million dollars in just two weeks.
And we then drove the hospital equipment all
the way from London in convoy to the Syria
border to deliver it to our partners as a
loud and clear message that we will not be
stopped from doing our life‑saving work
and taking hundreds of solidarity from ‑‑
messengers of solidarity of people around
the world so people know they are heard and
they are seen.
(applause).
Three months later, Hope Hospital for Children
opened its doors, it's already treated 12,000
children in that three months. The third reason
is the creativity, the resourcefulness. One
of our partners called Ghiras Al Nahda, they
work in besieged Damascus, 3 million people
are being slowly starved to death, I have
a photo of a 15‑year‑old I won't you,
he hung himself because he couldn't stand
to be starved to death.
There was a partnership with a scientific
center in Damascus with Germany, for mushrooms.
In Syria we call mushrooms the meat of the
poor, high in protein, vitamins, fiber. After
nearly two years of trials and the scientific
center burning down, rebuilding it, they continued
their research and only last month did they
run a successful crowdfunding campaign to
distribute these mushroom‑growing kits to
1850 families in besieged Damascus so they
can feed themselves with dignity in a sustainable
manner.
And lastly, support local humanitarians because
our problems are your problems. The Geneva
conventions for protection are there for you're
collective protection. Mr. Biden yesterday
said that silence is complicity. If we okay
hospitals to be bombed anywhere, does that
mean it's okay that your hospitals now become
legitimate terrorist or military targets?
Supposedly the Ebola crisis has taught us
that when the healthcare systems of countries
are destroyed and not rebuilt, those countries
become hot‑bed exporters of disease and
I can tell you our system has been decimated.
And we already are exporting polio and measles.
And we are never going to solve the refugee
crisis until we provide those basic healthcare
services that people need in their own country.
So ladies and gentlemen, war can bring out
the absolute worst of humanity, but I have
seen it bring out the absolute best. Where
you see death, destruction and devastation,
I see hope, I see optimism, I see opportunities
and possibilities. We can make a tangible
difference to the lives of people who are
devastated by war, by supporting the very
people who not only will save lives now, but
they're the ones who will rebuild. They're
the ones who will resuture the bleeding wounds
of these fractured societies to help them
heal for a thriving and peaceful future.
But for that, we need a paradigm shift. We
need a new humanitarian vision, one where
we are all humanitarians. We the people. One
where you the engaged global citizens of the
world are the global humanitarians who are
standing directly with and shoulder to shoulder
with local humanitarians.
My friends at Google, I heard yesterday that
you've already helped in my country. Can you
help me to protect medical workers and hospitals
in war zones? How can we use AI or driverless
cars or drones to deliver aid in the most
dangerous places to people who cannot be reached?
Everyone in this room can make a difference,
so join me. We can make this happen. Thank
you.
(applause).
