“Today an orchestra. Tomorrow a country.” These were the words of the youngest member of the Palestine Youth Orchestra (PYO), aged just 14, summing up the hopes and dreams of the 85 talented young musicians who have just finished a hugely successful UK tour, organised by Palmusic.

Caabu is one of over 30 Syrian, regional and international humanitarian and human rights organisations, including Crisis Action, the IRC and Christian Aid, who are signatories to a statement on the Russia-Syrian proposal to establish "humanitarian corridors" out of Aleppo. The statement follows below.

“HUMANITARIAN CORRIDOR” PROPOSAL DEEPLY FLAWED

US, Europe have been pushed to the fringes in Syria - Caabu Director, Chris Doyle writes for CNN

8 September 2016

On 21 July, a two-and-a-half-hour long debate was held in the House of Lords on the situation of Palestinian children in the Occupied Territories and the impact of the occupation on their mental health. This was the second debate on the issue this year following a Commons debate on 6 January.

A. Reviakin is a current intern at Caabu. He is studying Arabic and International Relations at the University of Durham.

Caabu was appaled by Kelvin MacKenzie's column in today's (Monday 18th July) edition of The Sun, which legitimised xenephobia (pictured below).

In response, Caabu has lodged a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO): 

"To whom It may concern:

In July 2016, Caabu Director, Chris Doyle attended a conference on refugees in Kos.  After the conference he visited a centre for refugees at risk and also the Muslim cemetery where 37 of those who drowned have been buried.

Here Chris explains the situation at the cemetery:

At the time, there were 677 refugees in Kos, of whom 155 are Syrian.   Last summer Kos had 15,000. 

Chilcot: The Iraq war was a failure but we still need a debate

The key findings of the Chilcot report show that the 2003 war on Iraq was a strategic failure and a war that was unnecessary and based on flawed intelligence.  As Caabu warned at the time, it was a war for which Britain was ill-prepared and the government under Tony Blair woefully underestimated the challenges.

The long-awaited results of the Iraq Inquiry, also known as the Chilcot Inquiry, have been published. The unanimous conclusion drawn is that there was no need to go to war in 2003.

It has Chilcot saying war was “not a last resort”. The UK decided to invade before the peaceful options had been exhausted. Tony Blair committed to an invasion of Iraq almost eight months before receiving parliamentary and legal backing, and began military action before diplomatic alternatives were exhausted, a much-awaited inquiry into the conflict has concluded.

The destruction of Iraq 1990-2016

The key aim of the Iraq inquiry is to examine the lessons of the Iraq war. 

This paper briefly summarises Iraq’s journey from being one of the most advanced states in the Middle East to a country that only exists on paper, fragmented and crushed by the cumulative impact of a brutal regime, three wars, a harsh sanctions regime, failing and corrupt post-war governance and extremist Islamist insurgencies. 

The run up to the 2003 war