A leading charity organization, Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay), announced its nationwide and international aid campaign for the upcoming Qurban Bayram (Eid al-Adha) on Thursday. On the occasion of the Islamic holiday, which will be marked next month, the charity will deliver food in the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa and Asia.
The holiday is a time for "sharing" in Islam. Every Muslim who can afford to slaughter sacrificial animals, including sheep and cows, and deliver the meat to the needy.
Turkish charities, including Red Crescent, have been running aid campaigns for years. Professor Fatma Meriç Yılmaz, deputy director of the charity, announced their humanitarian aid plans for Bayram at a press conference in Istanbul on Thursday.
Yılmaz said donors would be asked to donate $143 (TL 2,475) for the purchase and slaughter of sacrificial animals whose meat will be delivered to the needy for an aid campaign in Turkey, while they would be required to pay $85 (TL 1,475) for donations abroad.
The charity’s crews slaughter animals and volunteers deliver the meat to people in need following Bayram. In recent years, it adopted a new scheme involving storing meat in cans and keeping them in storage units, for yearlong aid deliveries.
Yılmaz said more than 4.1 million people benefited from donations on the occasion of Qurban Bayram last year in 22 countries. She said meat delivery would be immediate abroad, while donors choosing to donate in Turkey will have the canned meat delivered to households. This year, the charity plans to reach out to another 4 million people across the world, in Turkey and 50 locations abroad.
Other charities have also recently announced their plans for aid campaigns in Bayram. Istanbul-based Vuslat Association will undertake an animal slaughtering campaign and deliver their meat to 20 countries on four continents, from Somalia to Peru. Hayrat, another charity association based in Istanbul, will deliver meat to needy Muslims from Sudan and Senegal to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Malaysia.
Aid campaigns come at a time of rising food crises across the world. Earlier this week, two U.N. food agencies issued stark warnings about multiple, looming crises on the planet, driven by climate "shocks" like drought and worsened by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine that have sent fuel and food prices soaring. The glum assessment came in a report by two Rome-based food agencies: the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
WFP Executive Director David Beasley said besides hurting "the poorest of the poor," the global food crises threaten to overwhelm millions of families who are just getting by. "Conditions now are much worse than during the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2007-2008 food price crisis, when 48 countries were rocked by political unrest, riots and protests," Beasley said in a statement. He cited as "just the tip of the iceberg" food crises now in Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru and Sri Lanka. The report calls for urgent humanitarian action to help "hunger hotspots" where acute hunger is expected to worsen over the next few months. The report tagged six nations as "highest alert" hot spots facing catastrophic conditions: Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia. It said as many as 750,000 people are facing starvation and death in those countries. Of those, 400,000 are in Ethiopia's embattled Tigray region, the highest number on record in any one country since the 2011 famine in Somalia, the U.N. agencies said.