Service Projects

“The earthquake has left us with nothing,” Muhammad Ishaq, a 55-year-old father of 12 children from Afghanistan. “My sons and daughters got cold and got sick because we don’t have a warm place to live. We had a water well which was also destroyed by the earthquake and now we don’t have clean water to drink.”

With the effects of prolonged drought on wheat cultivation and agricultural production, Afghanistan is facing one of the world’s worst food insecurity and malnutrition crises, with around 20 million people expericing emergency levels of food insecurity, and more than half of all children under 5 projected to face acute malnutrition. A deadly 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit the southeast of the country in June 2022, claiming at least 1,000 lives. Natural disasters further exacerbated the situation. Afghanistan is experiencing the compounding effects of decades of conflicts, food insecurity, severe drought, other climate-related disasters, displacement and health services gaps. More than 2 million people in Afghanistan dire need humanitarian assistance.

"We could barely manage to live in the past, but now we used up all our savings on necessities. " – said Vasantha, a single mother from the Northern Province, her husband  died years ago during the civil war.

Sri Lanka has been in a severe economic crisis since the breakout of the epidemic in 2020 and is tipping into one of the country’s worst humanitarian crises in decades. 6.7 million people now in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Millions of families are facing shortages of food, fuel, cooking gas, essential supplies, and medicines as the humanitarian impacts of the economic crisis continue to multiply and the worsening shortages turned months of peaceful protest into violence. An estimated 38% of the population are facing food insecurity, with the situation likely to deteriorate in coming weeks and months. While the nationwide crisis is impacting the entire population of 22 million people in Sri Lanka, some 2.4 million living below the poverty line are the most affected by the loss of livelihoods and shortages of essential items

In response to the humanitarian needs in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, the Red Cross has been providing humanitarian aids on the ground, including food assistance, clean water, medical care, sanitation and provide cash assistance to those affected to restore their livelihoods. Meanwhile, support people in Restoring Family Links (RFL) and provide emergency shelter to displaced people.

Hong Kong Red Cross has supported the vulnerable people in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka through different programs. Your donation to Afghanistan and Sri Lanka Humanitarian Crisis will allow the Red Cross to continuously provide support to the ongoing emergency response to those affected by the crisis. The Red Cross will also support longer-term programming tailored to the evolving needs of the countries.