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Iraq: NGOs Urge More Aid for
Displaced Families in South
IRIN
Iraq
March 27, 2007 Nearly a
million displaced people in Iraq’s increasingly volatile southern
provinces are in urgent need of food, medicines and municipal services,
local officials and NGOs say. Aid workers have called on international
humanitarian organisations and the central government to provide more
assistance to the growing numbers of displaced in the south of the
country.
“Najaf, Kerbala and Basra provinces, in particular, are greatly
suffering with a continued increase in displacement. There are dozens of
families arriving every day at camps for the displaced, causing a lack
of essential needs such as food and health care,” said Ali Fakhouri, a
spokesman of Najaf provincial council.
“The past two months were the worst for those families. For security
reasons,the delivery of aid has decreased considerably and because of a
lack in medicines in the region’s hospitals and inaccessibility to
hospitals, children are more vulnerable to diseases,” Fakhouri added.
“Diarrhoea is common among children in displaced groups in the south.”
Fakhouri said that nearly 90 percent of the 700,000 internally displaced
people in the southern provinces lack essential needs. According to the
United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), of this total, at least 310,000
arrived there after the bombing on 22 February 2006 of a revered Shia
shrine in the northern city of Samarra caused an escalation of sectarian
violence.
Fakhouri said that unofficial records suggest there are at least 200,000
more displaced people in the southern provinces, bringing the total to
nearly a million. The economically poorer southern cities have few jobs
to offer this massive influx of people. As such, the displaced are
largely unemployed and depend on assistance from aid organisations.
Government slow to respond
Local NGOs say they simply cannot cope with the large numbers arriving
in the south and blame the government for being slow to respond to the
growing humanitarian crisis there. Fareed Abbas, a spokesman for Najaf-based
NGO the Muslim Organisation for Peace (MOP), said the central government
was unwilling to provide sufficient funds to develop sanitation,
education and electricity projects in the southern provinces.
“We have appealed dozens of times to the central government to help in
such critical circumstances but we haven’t got any response yet.
Instead, over the past few months, their assistance has decreased
considerably, leaving people without support and infrastructure,” Abbas
said.
“Children are getting sick and the elderly are dying because they cannot
get treatment for their chronic diseases. Pregnant women are dying or
losing their babies because they cannot reach hospitals on time to get
help from specialists,” he added.
Abbas stressed the urgent need for international support and better
coordination of aid deliveries. “When aid convoys reach our provinces,
they come with medicines that aren’t useful, such as tonnes of drugs for
headaches, or food stuffs that won’t help to feed families,” he said.
Dr Aziz Ali Baroud, a physician at Najaf Main Hospital, said the
region’s hospitals cannot cope with the increase in people seeking
medical treatment since the beginning of 2007. As a result, there are
severe shortages in specialists and in medical essentials such as
paediatric needles and heart disease drugs, he said.
“At least one person dies in our hospital every day due to lack of
assistance or medicines. If you add all the people dying for the same
reason in all the hospitals in the southern provinces, the number
becomes very serious,” Baroud said, adding that abortions have become
common among displaced women unable to cope with their situation.
Difficulties in food ration delivery
Compounding the health problems the displaced face in Iraq’s southern
provinces is a lack of access to food. According to Ministry of Trade
officials, the continuous movement of families to southern areas has
caused delays in the delivery of food rations (distributed as aid by the
Ministry of Trade to help poor families registered by the government).
“Food rations are delivered every month to the distribution centres
where families have registered. When they move to another area, we have
to be informed of this change of address to be able to change the
delivery of their aid to another area,” said Khalid Farhan, a senior
official of Ministry of Trade. “But displaced families often can’t carry
out these administrative procedures as they are fleeing their
neighbourhoods for security reasons.”
The result is many newly displaced people do not receive food rations
“for a period of time because of technical arrangements”, said Farhan.
Based on information from Najaf provincial council, at least 120,000
people in the province have not received their food rations after
fleeing their homes in Baghdad or neighbouring cities.
“We have been trying to get our food rations for the past four months
but we haven’t received any kind of answer. And we depend on assistance
from NGOs that isn’t always available,” said Abu Hassan, 54, a displaced
father of five. “We urge the government to speed up the delivery of our
food rations before we die of hunger.”
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