No Relief for Camp Kids

   

Basic needs of many displaced children still not being met.

By an IWPR reporter in Baghdad (ICR No. 238, 23-Nov-07)

Seven-year-old Ali Hussein’s toy is an old tyre, which he pushes back and forth in a pond of dirty water.

Ali, a mud-caked, pale-faced little boy, is a Shia from Baqouba, 50 kilometres north of Baghdad, who together with his family left the town after his father was killed by Sunni insurgents. The family was told they would also be killed if they stayed there.

"He was a very nice person and no one can replace him," said Ali.

Ali and his family now live in a camp in the al-Habibya area east of Baghdad. The conditions in the camp are poor, its residents are impoverished and the services are limited. Ali, a first grader, no longer attends school.

Recent reports of refugee and internally displaced families trickling back to their Baghdad neighbourhoods have brought some semblance of hope that the security situation is improving in the capital.

But “the number being displaced still far exceeds the number of returnees”, according to a November report by the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, a Swiss-based intergovernmental organisation focusing on refugees and displaced persons. And aid for internally displaced Iraqis is not meeting needs, aid organisations report.

Hundreds of thousands of families remain in camps throughout the country, where young Iraqis do not have access to education and are vulnerable to disease, according to aid agencies.

According to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, 15 per cent of Iraq’s population - about four million people - has fled their homes since 2003. Fifty per cent are children.

The IOM in Iraq reports that 2.25 million Iraqis are internally displaced. In September 2007, Amnesty International said that Iraq had the "the fastest growing displacement crisis in the world".

“Inside Iraq, conditions for displaced children and the communities hosting them are grave,” UNICEF maintained in a report earlier this year. “The need to act is urgent.”

The camps lack basic services such as clean water, sewage and electricity. In one camp in the capital’s al-Madaen neighbourhood, 65 families are living in mud houses and children are suffering from diaorreah, skin diseases and malnutrition, according to the IOM. Children are working to support their families and are not attending school.

Efforts to raise money for children have achieved little.
UNICEF launched an appeal in late May for nearly 42 million US dollars to support displaced Iraqi children and women in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. But the agency has yet to receive any funds, according to a November 23 report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. IWPR sought confirmation from UNICEF as we went to press, by the agency’s media office was unable to do so.

The IOM in Iraq is trying to raise 85 million dollars in aid to help internally displaced Iraqis over a period of two years. The chief of mission in Iraq, Rafiq A Tschannen, noted in an appeal written on the organisation’s website that “in spite of the appeals only a fraction of internally displaced Iraqis [are] getting basic assistance”.

The IOM has assessed the needs of 31,870 internally displaced families in Baghdad, but the number is likely higher, as many do not register with official agencies.

The conditions in the camps are often dire, as they tend to be located in areas with high rates of unemployment, poor security and lack of basic services. One camp in Baghdad’s al-Adhimiyah area shut down in September 2007 because of frequent clashes between multinational forces and militias.

The ministry of social affairs provides between 75 and 90 dollars a month for families, depending on their size. Some families have complained, though, that the application process for the assistance is too bureaucratic. And, as a consequence, their children’s basic needs are not being met in the camps.

Lafta Ali, a 46-year-old Sunni from Baghdad’s al-Amil neighbourhood, fled to a camp in the Sunni-controlled al-Yarmuk district of the city with her husband and four children after Shia militias ordered them to leave their homes. There aren’t services in the camp, and her children are now ill with diaorreah.

"The suffering has reached a level that we can't bear any more," she said.

Sulaiman Mohi al-Deen, a psychiatrist, worries about the prospects of displaced children living in poverty and under stress. They have to have their basis needs left, he said, otherwise they may “turn to crime, violence and revenge in the future”.