Unipol together with UNHCR announces commitment to provide health care to syrian refugees in Lebanon

Sep 21 2016
Sep 21 2016
New York

The Unipol Group in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) committed to provide health care to Syrian refugees in Lebanon. A Commitment to Action was announced by Carlo Cimbri, Unipol Group CEO, in the presence of Filippo Grandi, the High Commissioner of the United Nations Refugee Agency, during the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting, held from 19 to 21 September in New York.

The partnership between Unipol and UNHCR will provide hospital and emergency life-saving interventions - including natural or caesarean deliveries - to Syrian refugees in Lebanon, the country that now houses the highest number of refugees per capita concentration of refugees in the world, more than one million people in a country with a population of around 4 million.

The commitment, which will last two years, provides coverage of 75% - or 90% in the most vulnerable cases – of hospitalization costs of refugees and treatments, which will be provided through a hospital network with which UNHCR has previous agreements. The collaboration between the Unipol Group and UNHCR also includes a number of initiatives to raise awareness among employees, partners and customers who will be able to contribute to the health care program through a voluntary donation.

Carlo Cimbri received from CGI a Commitment Certificate for this initiative and commented: "In the current world the refugee emergency is now firmly placed as first item of the global agenda, as it arises from the meetings taking place here in New York among the global leaders. Careful emergency management and clear action on the causes of this phenomenon is the basis for not breaking up - often permanently - the social fabric in the countries of origin and, at the same time, not to trigger the equilibrium of the host countries. In this context, Unipol has decided to offer its support to those who, directly in the countries neighboring crisis areas that feed migration flows, are committed to providing answers, protection and assistance despite the scarcity of available means."

The collaboration between Unipol and UNHCR is part of a broader project that responds to the call made at the Summit of the United Nations for Refugees and Migrants, which was held on September 19 in New York, during which it was prompted to world leaders to develop a coordinated and timely response to the humanitarian crisis. 

"We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to UNIPOL for its important commitment to Syrian refugees - says Federico Clementi, director of fundraising at UNHCR Italy. This support is not limited to the basic financial aspect, but it extends to the promotion of employee awareness initiatives, partners and customers of the Group. We consider such help extremely valuable, especially in a difficult phase as the current one, in which, in addition to a substantial need for resources to fund humanitarian action, we find daily an equally important need to communicate to as many people as possible the drama lived by Syrian refugees."

UNHCR has started a project on medical assistance in Lebanon only in 2015 and has already provided emergency hospital services to over 58,000 people.