Iraq, 20 years after the American invasion, forgotten children and women struggle to rebuild their lives

ROME – 20 years after the US-led invasion, there are still 1.2 million internally displaced people in Iraq. The main emergencies for these people are limited access to health care and education and child labor on the street. Many people have lost their homes in the bombings or are afraid to return to their cities of origin due to tensions and the presence of explosive devices in the area. In addition, floods, rising temperatures and droughts caused by climate change have destroyed livelihoods.

History. Manar has seven children ranging in age from 1 to 13. Four of them were born in a tent in an IDP camp in Duhok in northwestern Iraq, where the family has lived for seven years. Manar comes from a village in Sinjar, about 180km away, which was first captured by ISIS and then destroyed by airstrikes. “There were so many times my kids asked me for toys or food, and I cried because we couldn’t afford it. I have been diagnosed with breast disease and the doctors have advised me not to breastfeed the babies but I continue to do so as I cannot afford formula. Today my daughters got sick too,” said Manar, who was able to open her clothing store in the camp thanks to a grant from Save the Children.

The struggle of living. “It is very difficult to live here in these conditions. I am worried for the safety of my children and for not being able to feed them, but I am also happy because today, for the first time, I was able to give them money to buy sweets However, we feel safer here than in Sinjar, where there are many armed groups. We don’t know who they are or where they come from”. About 50 percent of Iraqi internally displaced people are in Duhok and Ninewa governorates. For the United Nations, this is a problem with no solution at the moment: 4.1 million people are still in need of humanitarian assistance. According to UN estimates, nearly a third of Iraq’s 42 million people live in poverty.

Child exploitation. The slow post-war economic recovery pushes families to resort to child labour, as people fail to meet basic needs, thereby undermining children’s education and fundamental rights. Zeinab, 14, fled her home in Mosul and now lives in Kirkuk. He has four siblings, but only one of them attends school: “My brothers and I have to work to cover our expenses, including school. My 10-year-old brother sells packets of tissues on the street, even though we know that street trading is dangerous”. Other children interviewed by Save the Children they cited the distance from home to school or lack of safety on the road as reasons for not attending class. Children without an education are more exposed to child labor and early marriage.

The drama of the Yazidis. Some 400,000 Yazidis – an ethnic and religious minority – were captured, killed or forced to flee their ancestral homeland of Sinjar in August 2014, after ISIL crossed the border from Syria. Up to 3,000 women and girls have been abducted and subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence. Many are still missing. Lama, 27, mother of three of Yazidi origin, from Sinjar, is the only one to bring the money home. She was kidnapped by Islamic extremists at the age of 18. During the 12 days she was held captive, she Lama witnessed children and men being killed, and once she was released, she was displaced several times and could not return to her village. “Everything is still entangled in my memory. When I close my eyes, I see horrible things. I see them in my dreams. We went through the harshest forms of torture. I still have anxiety attacks, suffer from depression and low self-esteem. During displacement we faced many difficulties, especially related to the living conditions in the camps. We did not have food and water, many children and the elderly died of thirst and hunger. Women and children were the most affected by the crisis. Many of the women and girls displaced with me have been kidnapped, tortured or sexually abused.”

The help of Save the Children. The organization helped Lama open a hairdressing salon in Sinjar and for now it is his family’s only source of income. With the emergence of crises in other countries in the region, international funding for humanitarian assistance in Iraq has decreased and is expected to decline further in the coming years. The 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan for Iraq received only 63 percent of the requested $607.2 million, and the funding level for the 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan barely reached 67 percent at the end of December 2022 “The world has forgotten Iraqi children. We have seen a decline in humanitarian funding in Iraq and we fear that with the shift of humanitarian attention to other crises, such as Ukraine and the recent earthquakes in Syria and Turkey, families vulnerable displaced people in the country will continue to suffer,” said Sarra Ghazi, Director of Save the Children in Iraq.