Humanitarian
Disaster In Iraq
By Jerry White
31 July, 2007
WSWS.org
Eight million Iraqis—or
one third of the country’s population—urgently require water,
sanitation, food and shelter, according to a new report issued by the
British-based relief organization Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee
of Iraq, a network of nearly 300 international and Iraq-based non-governmental
organizations.
The report paints a devastating
picture of the humanitarian disaster produced by the US invasion in
March 2003, as well as the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq for more
than decade after the first Gulf War. It underscores the criminal character
of the war and of both political parties in Washington, which continue
to support the occupation of the oil-rich country.
The report notes that in
addition to the daily violence from occupying forces and sectarian warfare,
“another kind of crisis, also due to the impact of the war, has
been slowly unfolding.”
According to Oxfam, Iraq’s
civilians are “suffering from a denial of fundamental human rights
in the form of chronic poverty, malnutrition, illness, lack of access
to basic services, and destruction of homes, vital facilities, and infrastructure,
as well as injury and death. Basic indicators of humanitarian need in
Iraq show that the slide into poverty and deprivation since the coalition
forces entered the country in 2003 has been dramatic, and a deep trauma
for the Iraqi people.”
Researchers found that of
the eight million people in need of aid, four million are “food
insecure and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance.”
Two million more are displaced refugees in their own country, nearly
three-quarters of whom are women and children. In addition, another
two million Iraqis have been forced to migrate to other countries, especially
Syria and Jordan, producing the “fastest-growing refugee crisis
in the world.”
The number people lacking
sufficient food has increased by more than 50 percent since 2004, when
the World Food Program determined that 2.6 million Iraqis were “extremely
poor.” Of the four million people who cannot regularly buy enough
to eat, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates
that only 60 percent currently have access to rations supplied by the
government-run public distribution system. In 2004 approximately 96
percent of needy Iraqis received such packages, which include wheat,
rice, dried milk, sugar, tea and soap.
Displaced Iraqis face the
most difficult conditions. Thirty-two percent of those forced to leave
their homes say they have no access to public rations, 51 percent report
receiving food rations only sometimes, while only 17 percent say they
always received them. Criminal gangs and militias often bar supply trucks
from reaching certain areas or loot them along the way. In addition,
the violence that has caused so many Iraqis to flee prevents them from
returning home to apply for the transfer of their rations to a new location.
As a result of these conditions,
child malnutrition rates in Iraq have risen from 19 percent before the
2003 invasion to 28 percent four years later, according to the Catholic
relief agency Caritas. More than 11 percent of newborn babies were underweight
in 2006, compared with 4 percent in 2003.
According to the Iraqi government’s
own statistics, 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from “absolute poverty”
and over 50 percent of the workforce is unemployed. Many families have
lost their main breadwinner due to the violent deaths of tens of thousands
of Iraqi men. If they get anything at all, widows receive a $100 a month
from the government, half the average monthly wage of $200.
Water, electricity and health care
The report notes that the
proportion of Iraqis without an adequate water supply has risen from
50 percent to 70 percent since 2003. In addition, 80 percent of Iraqis
lack effective sanitation. According to the International Committee
of the Red Cross, water is often contaminated due to poor repair of
sewage and water supply networks and the discharge of raw sewage into
rivers, which are the main source of drinking water. This has led to
an increase in diarrheal diseases in the population.
There has also been a decline
in electricity supplies over the past few months, with most homes in
Baghdad and other cities receiving only two hours of electricity a day.
According to Oxfam, health
services—which have been stretched beyond the limit due to the
ongoing violence—are “generally in a catastrophic situation
in the capital, in the main towns, and across the governates.”
In addition, hundreds of thousands of refugees are often not able to
receive treatment because they are outside of the home area where they
are registered.
The breakdown of the country’s
infrastructure and widespread corruption has undermined the ability
of the state-owned medical supply company, KEMADIA, to distribute equipment
to the country’s hospitals and health care centers. Of the 180
hospitals nationwide, 90 percent lack key resources, including basic
medical and surgical supplies. Doctors have reportedly asked the relatives
of injured patients to search local pharmacies for blood bags, sutures
and infusions before they can start surgery.
Iraq’s education system
has also been devastated. One survey found 92 percent of children had
learning disabilities that are largely attributed to the current climate
of fear. Over 800,000 children may now be out of school, according to
a recent estimate by Save the Children UK—up from 600,000 in 2004.
A recent report by the NGO Coordination Committee of Iraq found that
many schools have become shelters for internally displaced refugees.
In addition to the physical
damage produced by the invasion, a major factor behind the lack of clean
water, electricity, health care and other services is the so-called
“brain drain” caused by the forced migration of professionals
and skilled workers. Thousands of medical staff, water engineers, teachers
and other professionals have fled the violence, including by some estimates
80 percent of the professional staff in some universities and hospitals
in Baghdad. By the end of 2006, Oxfam notes, as many as 40 percent of
these workers had already fled the country.
This is part of the overall
refugee crisis. Approximately 40,000-50,000 Iraqis a month are leaving
their homes to seek safety outside of Iraq. Syria has around 1.4 million
Iraqi refugees, Jordan 750,000, the Gulf States 200,000, Egypt 80,000
and Lebanon 40,000.
According to the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, thousands of internally displaced people
without family links or money are living in public buildings and schools
where they are at constant risk of eviction, or in hazardous, improvised
shelters without water and electricity, or in camps administered by
the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. In particular, many of the country’s
minority populations—Christians, Assyrians, Yazidis, Turkmens
and Kurds—have been forced to flee persecution.
While the report places much
of the onus for the persistence of the present crisis on the US-backed
regime in Baghdad, Oxfam makes clear that US and Britain—as occupying
powers—have violated their legal obligations under the Geneva
Conventions to provide material assistance to the population and facilitate
humanitarian efforts.
The report notes that US-led
coalition forces, along with Iraqi security forces, have regularly interfered
with the work of organizations seeking to provide such assistance. During
many operations military forces seal off an area, not allowing anybody
to enter or leave. “Checkpoints, curfews, road closures, and sudden
changes in access to towns and cities for security reasons all pose
major constraints on NGOs’ ability to deliver a humanitarian response,”
the report notes.
In addition, the report notes,
funding for humanitarian assistance from Organization of Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) countries actually fell by 47 percent between
2003 and 2006, to $453 million. According to a recent Oxfam survey of
NGOs operating in Iraq, 80 percent could expand humanitarian work if
they had increased funding. Both the International Committee of the
Red Cross and the Iraqi Red Crescent Society have recently been forced
to launch appeals in order to raise money for their under-funded programs
in Iraq.
The Oxfam report, along with
a previous study by John Hopkins University which indicates that, by
now, more than three-quarters of a million Iraqis have died as a result
of the US invasion, makes it clear that the Bush administration and
all those who aided and abetted the destruction of Iraqi society are
guilty of war crimes, for which they must be held accountable.
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