Dear John,
Prior to joining Emgage, I spent ten years working as a foreign policy expert at the U.S. Department of State, specializing in U.S. Middle East policy. During that decade, no issue challenged me and broke my heart more than Syria. As an immigrant from beautiful Damascus, it was doubly heartbreaking to see my home country destroyed and the world's greatest power unable to help it. Moreover, I witnessed the international community's failure to uphold universal human rights by ignoring and at times masking the atrocities that were taking place there.
Emgage Action CEO Wa’el Alzayat at a Feb 2020 congressional press conference calling for civilian protection in Syria.
What's happening:
Today, over three million people are huddled in the northwestern province of Idlib, many of them displaced from other parts of the country. And the only thing protecting them from death or further displacement is a tenuous ceasefire brokered between Turkey and Russia that keeps the Syrian regime and its allies out of the area. Regardless of how one feels about the conflict in Syria, what is clear is that this ceasefire has succeeded at protecting civilian lives. This is why Emgage is encouraging Congress and the White House to support this ceasefire and to ramp-up humanitarian assistance to the people of Idlib and other parts of Syria that are in need.
What have we done:
For the past few months, we have engaged with members of Congress as well as presidential campaigns to ensure that the people of Syria are not forgotten. Specifically, we are asking them to support efforts to turn the ceasefire into a permanent one and to increase U.S. humanitarian assistance to those who need it most.
Our ask:
In solidarity,
Wa'el Alzayat
Emgage Action CEO
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