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World Vision International
Website: http://www.wvi.org
Source: Reuters AlertNet
http://www.alertnet.org/
May 21, 2003

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World Vision yesterday (Monday) carried out its first programme response in Mosul, registering Iraqi families living in Saddam Hussein’s palace compound as homeless and entitled to emergency aid.

Scores of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs crowded into an abandoned Grenade Unit building to sign up with registration teams leant to World Vision by the World Food Programme.

The desperation of those arriving was clear. Many said they had fled to the presidential palace compound in Mosul because they had been driven from their homes by Iraqi Kurds reclaiming traditional lands, because they were now jobless and could not pay rent, or because their homes had been bombed.

They are now living in looted barrack buildings that once housed the Special Republican Guard – the Al Axa Division – whose job had been to protect Saddam. Many fled with little more than the clothes on their backs and now sleep in fly-infested houses that have no furniture, cooking equipment, electricity or tapped water.

WV programme officer Margaret Chilcott, who oversaw the registration work, said collecting information from the families about where they had come from, what they lacked and family size had been difficult because so many had crowded forward for help.

“They were definitely desperate,” she said.

Across Iraq, humanitarian agencies like World Vision are collecting information about people made homeless by the war for the International Office for Migration (IOM). World Vision has been given the job for Nineweh governorate. Once traced, they will be given shelter, emergency aid, and food.

There are now scores of families living in the presidential compound, in abandoned government offices and elsewhere. Over the coming weeks, World Vision-WFP registration teams will fan across Nineweh on tracing missions.

Ghazwani Salman, a WFP observer who helped with the first day’s registration, said, “People think Iraq is a rich country but look around, you see we have the poorest people on earth.”

That was evident just a few metres from the Grenade Unit building where Ilyas Jasab Jasim, 22, had settled in one room with his extended family of 25.

After registering for help he showed World Vision staff his new home, a cement blockhouse surrounded by a yard full of twisted pieces of metal – the detritus of war.

Inside young children – several with diarrhea - were languishing in the heat under a makeshift corrugated iron roof.

Ilyas said his family had fled their Arab village of Al-Geteli after Kurdish fighters killed 11 Arabs nearby. Their village was subsequently demolished and they cannot return.

“It took 20 days to find this place (the palace). For 20 days we lived without a house. Our children suffered from hunger and we did not know what to do. We are very much in need of help,” said Ilyas. “The most important thing is food and shelter.”

World Vision will now inform the IOM of numbers of displaced and where they are. Food and IOM pre-positioned emergency relief will be made available to these families, possibly in tented camps.

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Direct Link:
--http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/105347775163.htm

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