Good morning. Every year, the Guardian and Observer charity appeal is themed on a subject central to the news agenda, as well as the humanitarian one. This year, the choice was dispiritingly straightforward: conflict.
The wars in Gaza and Ukraine are the most familiar, and have exacted a devastating cost. But the bitter civil war in Sudan has also killed tens of thousands, and forced millions from their homes. And from Haiti and Colombia to Myanmar to Ethiopia, it has been a dire year for the civilians who are always the most vulnerable to military violence and its long aftermath.
According to ACLED, which collects data on the subject, 50 countries rank in its highest categories for armed conflict – and one in seven people in the world have been exposed to the impact of war in 2024. There is more armed conflict across the world today than at any time since the second world war.
In different ways, the three charities that will receive donations from Guardian and Observer readers this year are all working to mitigate those harms. For today’s newsletter, Patrick Butler, the Guardian’s social policy editor who coordinates the appeal each year, explains how your money can make a difference. Click here to donate – and here are the headlines.
In depth: ‘A gesture of solidarity with the millions whose lives have been destroyed through war’
In her piece launching the appeal on Friday, Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner reflected on the importance of charities operating in the face of odds that sometimes seem hopeless. “A charity appeal can feel insignificant in the face of deep-rooted geopolitical enmities and hatred,” she wrote. “We ask you to support the Guardian and Observer appeal in a spirit of optimism and defiance.”
Médecins Sans Frontières, War Child and Parallel Histories are all remarkable examples of that spirit, working in very different ways. “They do amazing work,” Patrick Butler said. “We don’t restrict how they use our readers’ donations in any way: we trust them, as the experts, to spend it where it’s most effective. But we have many examples of how important what they do is. I would say to readers: you can’t stop these conflicts, but you can help the people who are doing what they can to ameliorate them for the most vulnerable people.”
***
Médecins Sans Frontières: ‘They risk their lives every day’
Also known as MSF or Doctors Without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontières has hospitals or clinics running in 70 countries across the world. Thousands of doctors, nurses, medical support workers and logistics staff risk their lives in places like Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan.
“The money we raise for MSF will be spent on emergency trauma care, in field hospitals where people are being treated for burns and fractures and bullet wounds every day, and in the underreported places as well as the ones that everyone knows about,” Patrick said.
In this piece reported from Port-au-Prince, Tom Phillips saw some of MSF’s work to help civilians caught in the crossfire of Haiti’s criminal insurrection. In November, the charity was forced to halt its services in the city for the first time in 30 years after vigilantes and the police attacked one of its ambulances, with two patients with bullet wounds being abducted and murdered.
Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF’s head of mission in Haiti, described how important it was that normal service resume soon: the charity’s clinics are some of the only places that “poor people – which is the vast majority of the population – can access and receive treatment”, he said.
That is true in many of the places MSF works, including Gaza, where its teams have performed more than 9,000 surgeries and held more than 471,000 outpatient consultations since the war began. “They are a remarkable organisation, and they risk their lives every day,” Patrick said. “They are absolutely on the frontline in the most dangerous places in the world.”
***
War Child: ‘They are there in the crisis, but they are also there to help pick up the pieces’
In just five months this year, War Child reached more than 1.1 million children in 14 countries. The only specialist charity for children affected by conflict, it delivers emergency support – but also seeks to provide the structure that will allow children to rebuild their lives once the violence stops.
Donations from Guardian and Observer readers will go towards emergency aid, education and specialist mental health support for children affected by war. “They are there in the crisis, but they are also there afterwards to help pick up the pieces,” Patrick said. “That’s hugely important. They help children who have been indescribably traumatised, who have perhaps lost their parents, and they’re in it for the long haul. We wanted to include them in the appeal because we know that as well as the immediate impact of war, it is absolutely vital to think about what happens next.”
War Child frequently channels support through locally led partner organisations. This piece by Karen McVeigh, on the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), is a powerful example of how daunting their work is, and how important. Here’s a story told by the charity’s director, Abu Jamei, about a 12-year-old boy at a camp in Deir al-Balah, who had stopped eating or speaking after his friends were killed in front of him:
The social worker went to that tent, to that lovely boy, who had brightly coloured eyes. She said: ‘I know you have not spoken for three days. I am here just to listen to you, to give you space, for whatever comes to your mind.
“For 15 minutes, they sat in silence, and then the child started to cry. Then, in the first words he had spoken since the attack, he said: ‘I saw my friends die in an apartment. They told me that they had gone to heaven but one of my friends, when they found him, he was decapitated. How can he go to heaven without his head?’
“The psychologist was able to reassure him, telling him heaven is a different reality and he did not need to worry. She persuaded him: ‘Let’s eat something together.’”
Abu Jamei says optimism for the future is crucial, and the international community must keep an eye on Gaza: “If you give up on us, and we give up on our people, then what’s going to happen?”
***
Parallel Histories: Helping children find a shared understanding of the past
Where War Child and MSF are established international players, Parallel Histories is a newer charity operating in a very different sphere: helping schools to teach the contested histories of conflicts in places like Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland, in the hope that doing so will make future generations better able to bridge those divides.
It was established by the late history teacher Michael Davies, and its aims were set out brilliantly in a piece he wrote for the Guardian in 2015 about the impact of a school trip to Israel and the West Bank. “My aim is to develop a new curriculum in the UK for teaching this seemingly intractable conflict,” he wrote. “This is early days. I’m in the process of looking for a sponsor for this effort. I really hope it works.”
Davies died earlier this year – but Parallel Histories now works with more than 1,400 schools, offering them innovative materials and teacher training courses in pursuit of their founder’s mission. “It resonates, in many ways, with what journalists do,” Patrick said. “It’s about helping children get beyond the very divisive narratives that might be in circulation to try to establish what we know about the truth.”
As a small charity, the money that Guardian and Observer readers give to Parallel Histories will have a big impact. “It’s like seed capital,” Patrick said. “It’s almost a startup, doing something genuinely innovative. And we really believe that it’s worth trying to help it grow.”
***
What it means to donate
Since 2015, Guardian and Observer readers have raised more than £13.5m for good causes. They have given to charities supporting refugees, fighting child poverty, and tackling the climate crisis. And every year, readers respond with a humbling generosity that underlines how crucial the values that these charities embody continue to be.
“When people donate online, they’re offered the option to send us an email explaining why,” Patrick said. “And what comes through is an incredible belief in this work, and a spirit of generosity. What they often tell us is that these are issues that they’ve been thinking about a lot, and the appeal has crystallised that into an opportunity to do something.”
Any journalist who has taken calls on the annual telethon day will tell you the same thing: once they have got over their disappointment that you’re not Marina Hyde or John Crace, the way readers talk about why they’re donating, often at the very limit of what they can afford, is incredibly moving.
“I hope the work being done by this year’s charities will have a similar impact,” Patrick said. “It’s amazing how much people want to help.”
Look out for more coverage of all three charities over the next few weeks – and if you’re ready to donate, here’s that link again.
What else we’ve been reading
With Bashar al-Assad’s regime destabilised and public institutions in disarray, Syria faces the urgent challenge of resuming basic public services. William Christou reports from Damascus on the push to get back to work in the midst of chaos. Nimo
Tuesday’s First Edition, about Sednaya prison, mentioned the remarkable project undertaken by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture to map out the site on the basis of the memories of former detainees. This piece by the lead acoustic investigator, the artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, is a chilling account of that process.
“Thompson’s murder is one symptom of the American appetite for violence; his line of work is another,” the New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino writes in this incisive analysis on the public response to the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO says. Nimo
The View from Down Here, a newsletter by writer, campaigner and “card-carrying disabled woman” Lucy Webster, is always excellent. This week Webster has an evocative, clear-eyed piece about how ableism feels, and how obvious it is even when it’s subtle: “I can sense ableism from the way my body reacts to someone’s tone of voice when they say hello.” Archie
Argentina’s climate-denying president, Javier Milei, has dramatically reshaped national policy in his first year, championing aggressive extraction policies that threaten indigenous lands and environmental protections. Sam Meadows spoke with Indigenous people and environmentalists about the impact. Nimo
The front pages
“Ministers to axe more than 10,000 civil service jobs in budgets purge” says the Guardian this morning. “Missed chances to stop horrific murder of Sara” is the top story in the Times while the Mirror has “The smile that hid a life of torture”. The Mail asks “Why does this keep happening? Little Sara, let down by everyone supposed to protect her”. The Express shames the murderers, saying Sara Sharif was “Killed by the very adults who should have loved and protected her”. As does the Metro: “Not even a tear for Sara” from the father and stepmother, it says. “Labour bid to ‘bulldoze’ the Home Counties” is the splash in the Telegraph. And finally the Financial Times has “Qatar’s $500bn fund aims to invest gas windfall in ‘big ticket’ US and UK deals”.
Today in Focus
The Unabomber and his ongoing influence
Ted Kaczynski, the Harvard-educated mathematician who ran a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people, died in prison last year. But his manifesto promoting violent rebellion against the modern world continues to inspire copycat attacks
Cartoon of the day | Nicola Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
In an extraordinary maritime journey, a humpback whale has set a new record by travelling more than 13,000km from Colombia to Zanzibar, showcasing the remarkable navigational abilities of these magnificent marine mammals. Whale scientist Dr Vanessa Pirotta, who was not involved with the research, said it was a “brilliant example” of combining citizen science and technology to “take a single day of whale watching and turn it into something remarkable”. Whale experts are excited about the potential of such tracking methods to enhance our understanding of marine life. “We are learning way more because we have the tools in place,” Pirotta said. “As a world, we are way more connected, and that means the stories that we can tell about whales are more connected globally than ever before.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
