Gorilla’s Guides

GENEVA (AFP) The World Health Organisation said Thursday that cholera and typhoid pose the key risks to health in Iraq, with refugees and displaced people particularly vulnerable to any outbreak.

“The fear of cholera and typhoid is our immediate and urgent priority,” said Nae’ema al-Gasseer, the WHO’s country representative in Iraq.

Millions of Iraqis have been displaced within and without the country since the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, and these people are particularly vulnerable to disease risks due to their precarious circumstances.

The WHO opened a permanent office in the Iraqi capital Baghdad last month, after scaling down its operations in the wake of a devastating terrorist attack against the UN headquarters in the city in August 2003.

Gasseer, who works in the permanent office, said being based in the capital enabled her to be “much closer to decision making” and improve cooperation with the Iraqi authorities.

The WHO said earlier this year that an average of 120 Iraqi adults died a violent death every day in the three years following the 2003 invasion.

The WHO estimated the daily death toll by averaging the overall estimates out at 151,000 dead. The survey was based on interviews conducted in 9,345 households in nearly 1,000 neighbourhoods and villages across Iraq.

In 2006, another study by US doctors in the British medical journal The Lancet claimed that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

WHO says cholera, typhoid main health risks in Iraq - Middle East Times

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Soaring food prices and the effects of global warming threaten to drive ever more people from their homes, the head of the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday.

The UNHCR said the number of refugees worldwide had risen for a second year running. Displaced people living outside their home country rose by almost 500,000 last year to 11.4m at the end of 2007, mainly due to the “volatile situation in Iraq”, the agency said in its annual Global Trends report.

The number of people displaced internally by conflict or persecution increased to 26m from 24.4m at the end of 2006. Another 25m have been forced from their homes by natural disasters.

António Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said: “After a five-year decline in the number of refugees between 2001 and 2005, we have now seen two years of increases, and that’s a concern.”

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BAQUBA, May 15 (IPS) - Farmers in the Diyala province in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources.

Nothing now seems more difficult in Iraq than the business of farming.

“The shortage of water is the biggest threat that Iraqi agriculture has ever faced,” an employee in the directorate-general of irrigation for Diyala province, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “It threatens not only food but also employment in this city (Baquba, capital of the province).

“The shortage of water can be ascribed to the shortage of rain and snow at the main sources,” the employee at the irrigation centre said.

Many farmers say that they fear that the northern Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq is facing a dry 2008. The mountains there, besides the mountains of southwest Iran and southern Turkey, form a large source of water for Iraq.

The government is doing little to help people over this crisis. “The directorate is impotent and can give nothing to the farmers,” the irrigation centre employee said. “Hundreds of thousands of acres are now desolate, and thousands of people jobless.”

Most villagers work in farming, and now that farming no more sustains people as it did, life there is badly hit. Agriculture in this area kept Iraq supplied, and also produced enough for exports. But now farmers sometimes have a hard time feeding themselves.

“The majority of our village farmers have quit and the rest will follow,” farmer Nasir Ibrahim told IPS. “This is because of obstacles like security, displacement, water shortage, lack of seeds, and lack of backing on the part of the ministry.

“Farming is our source of our living; it’s our job. We used to live in the village; we cannot live in the city to work in offices, even though so many farmers have become policemen.”

The degraded security situation in the province has left farmers with the option only of selling their fruit and vegetables in smaller markets, because accessing the central market has become too dangerous.

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GENEVA, May 9 (UNHCR) – Faced with a looming funding shortfall, the UN refugee agency warned on Friday that it could soon be forced to reduce and, in some cases, to halt a number of aid programmes for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees unless donor governments provide extra support.

Agency officials told a donor meeting at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on Friday that they lacked US$127 million required for assistance programmes for uprooted people in and around Iraq through the end of the year.

“We will not be able to help hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees and internally displaced if we do not receive funding for the remainder of 2008,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “Without this support, the humanitarian crisis we have faced over the past two years may grow even larger.”

In January, UNHCR appealed for US$261 million for its operations on behalf of some of the 4.7 million people uprooted by the conflict in Iraq. It has so far received US$134 million, but urgently requires the remainder to ensure the continuation of direct assistance programmes for many of Iraq’s internally displaced people (IDPs) as well as those who have fled elsewhere in the region, including to Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. The agency also cares for some 41,000 non-Iraqi refugees in Iraq, including Palestinians, Iranians, Turks and others.

Most of the refugees outside Iraq are in Syria and Jordan and are living in urban areas such as Damascus and Amman. The most vulnerable of these benefit from medical, food and direct financial assistance. Last month in Syria, more than 128,000 refugees received food assistance and close to 40,000 received subsidized health care. Many of them are running out of money and finding it increasingly difficult to survive amid a dramatic increase in food prices across the region.

In addition to direct cash assistance to some of the most vulnerable refugees, UNHCR is supporting efforts by governments in the region that are struggling to cope with the huge numbers of Iraqis who have strained local resources and infrastructure, including schools and health systems.

UNHCR has registered more than 280,000 Iraqis in neighbouring states; given health assistance to some 250,000 people and provided educational support in Syria, Jordan and other countries that has enabled some 72,000 refugee children to attend school. This year, the agency has set a target of getting another 70,000 Iraqi refugee children into school, but with the shortfall in funding, many Iraqi children might miss out on education.

In Egypt and Lebanon, where most Iraqi refugee children are enrolled in private schools, more than 4,000 children will not receive the education grants that UNHCR offered last year to enable them to continue their education.

Health programmes for Iraqis could be drastically reduced and the provision of some specialized medical interventions might come to a complete halt. By August, UNHCR will not be able to cover all basic health needs of Iraqis, and many seriously ill Iraqis will not be able to receive their monthly medication.

Since January, 150,000 Iraqis in Syria and close 19,000 in Jordan received basic health care assistance. With health facilities compromised in many parts of Iraq and many doctors no longer available, a growing number of ailing Iraqis are becoming refugees as they leave home in search of medical care elsewhere.

Distribution programmes in Syria and Jordan, the lifeline of 150,000 refugees who received food aid in 2007-2008, could be reduced, forcing many Iraqis into further destitution and raising the likelihood of higher malnutrition rates and increased child labour.

Omar, a 69-year-old refugee from Baghdad, said he would die a “slow death” if assistance was stopped. He and his family have depended on food and medical assistance since they fled to Syria in 2006, and are paying rent from remittances from Iraq that he says are “our only way to survive.”

The funding crisis comes as fuel, food and rent costs have risen dramatically.

In November, 5 percent of Iraqi refugees interviewed in a UNHCR-commissioned survey by IPSOS Market Research said that they live on less than US$100 a month. By March, that number had risen to 20 percent.

UNHCR - UNHCR seeks donor help amid funding shortfall for Iraq operation