Missoula has a head start. Thanks in large part to the initiative of several young mothers who started an organization called Soft Landing, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) is re-establishing an office in Missoula that will serve up to 100 incoming refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the year ahead. The IRC is an officially sanctioned Voluntary Agency (VOLAG) under U.S. refugee policy. 

As the official response has struggled, the crisis has given birth to a global network of new humanitarians as Syrians on the ground and overseas have come together to find ways to get aid to their beleaguered country. Unorthodox but determined, inexperienced but with a deep knowledge of their country, they’ve created aid procurement and delivery systems handing everything from food aid to hospital management.

How can a million people be made to feel welcome as our guests? How can Palmyra be saved? How should the world see Germany? The right approach to cultural policy can give answers, says DW's Gero Schliess.

A woman named Ghoson, sitting in front of a dark gray backdrop, begins to cry. Behind the film set, where she agreed to tell her story, awaits the refugee camp in Leros, Greece, that she is squatting in, biding her time until she will try to make her way further into Europe. [...] These visceral snippets of suffering and heartache are some of the stories chronicled in “Refuge,” a documentary film released Wednesday by production company Magna Carta.

As the Obama administration broadens the U.S. military campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria by boosting U.S. special operations forces to advise local U.S. allies, DLI will likely have a key role to play in that mission.

Iran used both top-down and bottom-up approach to utilize its soft power and exert influence before sanctions were lifted. The emphasis at this time was more on the bottom- up approach. But Iran’s priorities in soft power strategies have tactically shifted due to the sanctions reliefs and its application of hard power.

In northern Syria, a small core of Irish aid workers are among the group of international aid agencies helping to lessen the load for Um Mohammad and more than a million people caught between the warring sides. Aileen Wynne (25), from Raheen in Limerick, who studied human nutrition at University College Cork, became an aid worker after travelling to India. She has spent 16 months working with Syrian refugees.