Over half of the entire Syrian refugee population living in Iraqi Kurdistan, are children. Most have been through extremely traumatic experiences because of the ongoing crisis in their home country. To support these vulnerable children and better inform the humanitarian assistance in terms of child protection, ACTED and REACH, in collaboration with other international and local organisations, are taking part in Child Mapping Activities in Erbil. What happens during a Child Mapping Activity? ACTED and REACH carried out what is called ‘child mapping activities’ during which children were asked to draw their surroundings in the camps or their neighborhoods. Why is this exercise useful and how does it help? Because with these drawings, humanitarian actors are then able to see…

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) started airlifting on Tuesday enough food to feed close to 30,000 displaced people for a month from Iraq to Qamishli in northeast Syria amid growing problems in reaching people, especially in conflict and besieged areas. It is the second such WFP airlift from Erbil, Iraq, to people who would otherwise be cut off from humanitarian assistance. The first WFP-chartered flight landed at Qamishli airport with 40 metric tons of mixed food including rice, pasta, bulgur, wheat flour, canned food, pulses, salt, vegetable oil and sugar. A total of 10 flights will deliver over 400 metric tons of WFP food and other items – mainly clothes, detergent and soap – for UNICEF and the…

The Kurdistan Reconstruction and Development Society (KURDS) has been working on numerous projects to provide assistance to Syrian refugees in Dohuk, Erbil, and Slemani. In Dohuk KURDS has recently completed the construction of Phase 6 of Domiz Camp where more than 710 shelters have been completed and handed over to UNHCR. In Erbil KURDS is finalizing construction on phase 1 (512 shelters) of the permanent camp to be located in Kawergosk Camp and constructing UN offices in Qushtapa and Kawergosk. In Slemani KURDS is completing work on Arbat Refugee Camp where more than 2048 families will be able to reside once work is complete.KURDS has been active in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq since 1991. KURDS activities have included the…

The Heartland Alliance, a US organization that deals with human rights issues, has tracked 100 cases of human trafficking in Iraq during the past two years.Razan Dyler, a representative of the organization in Iraq, told Al-Monitor, “It was very difficult to track these cases, which occurred throughout the Iraqi provinces, including some in Iraqi Kurdistan. The situation in the latter is even more complicated [than in the rest of Iraq], in light of the absence of laws criminalizing human trafficking in the region. Thus, people can easily carry out trafficking there, and the perpetrators have no reservations and fear nothing.”Dyler added that the majority of the cases the organization has tracked involve human organ trafficking, female sex trafficking and child…

Baghdad, 21 January 2014 – Following an exponential increase in the number of displaced and stranded families by the ongoing fighting in several cities and towns in the province of Anbar, and their growing needs, the United Nations in Iraq is scaling up its support to the humanitarian response. As of 20 January, 22,151 families have registered as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), mainly in Anbar Governorate, but also in Erbil, Salah-Al-Din, Kerbala, Babylon, Najaf, and Baghdad. The actual number of displaced is presumed to be higher, as not all those who have been displaced have been registered.“Reaching the people affected by the fighting remains a significant challenge. The UN in Iraq continues to work closely with the Government of Iraq,…

Baghdad/Geneva (ICRC) – Thousands of civilians who fled the ongoing violence in Al Anbar in search of safety are enduring considerable hardship. Responding to their growing needs, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has delivered food and essential supplies over the past few days to nearly 12,000 displaced people in Saqlawiya, Ramadi, Heet, Habbaniya, Abu Ghraib, Rahalliya, Nasaf, Fallujah and Tikrit, as well as in the areas north of Babel and west of Karbala."During the aid distribution we encountered a group of around 65 people, many of them children, who were all staying in the same four-room house," said Rashid Hasan, an ICRC delegate who participated in a distribution of aid in Tikrit. "People are struggling hard to…