Iraq's Humanitarian Crisis Sparks Call to Action
Additionally, one in every four children is malnourished, the groups said, adding that all those figures represent large increases since the start of the war. Of the 180 hospitals in Iraq, more than 160 lack key resources including medical and surgical supplies. Oxfam said those statistics should be a call to action. "There is a humanitarian crisis," the group's Adriane Smith told OneWorld, "There are things that can be done right now: tangible things that can really be done right away." Oxfam and NCCI are asking the Iraqi government to double the amount of money it doles out to widows, order its security forces not to attack civilians, and improve the way it delivers food to the estimated 2 million people who have been displaced inside Iraq. More money is also needed, the groups said, which could make a big impact if funneled to organizations already operating on the ground. "There are non-profits in Iraq that are functioning, that are delivering aid," Smith said. "Eighty percent of them told us they could expand their operations. Even as we think long and hard about what the future of Iraq might be we have to think about the humanitarian contingencies." Money is also needed to educate the increasing numbers of children who have fled Iraq. In late July, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN refugee agency issued a call for $129 million, which they said would be used to get over 100,000 uprooted Iraqi children back in school. The groups and UN agencies noted that more than 2 million Iraqis have fled to Syria and Jordan since the U.S. invasion in 2003. About 500,000 of them are of school age and most currently have limited or no access to education. "UNICEF believes schooling is a primary concern in all emergency situations because it can help restore a sense of normalcy to the lives of children and can help them overcome psychological and other forms of distress," Pierrette Vu Thi, deputy director of UNICEF's Office of Emergency Programmes, said in a statement. "The Jordanian and Syrian governments have done a tremendous job so far of welcoming Iraqis as guests. The children of Iraq have waited long enough. Action must be taken now so that children are ready to go to school when classes begin," she added. According to UNICEF, of an estimated 300,000 Iraqi school-age children in Syria, only about 33,000 are currently enrolled in school. In Jordan, the government estimates that 19,000 Iraqi girls and boys are in school, while at least 50,000 do not attend. So far, international governments have been stingy in the face of the crisis, Kristele Younes of the group Refugees International told OneWorld. For example, she said, "the main organization helping the estimated 2 million internally displaced, the International Organization for Migration, has an appeal out there for $85 million for two years and this appeal has only been funded 18 percent." "The U.S. has only given $1.2 million," she added, "which is not even the cost of a day of this war. So we need to make sure the resources are there and sadly they're not." ....................................................................................
....................................................................................
|
Printable version
Back to top
