Iraq: Emergency Response & Recovery

Since the start of Covid-19 pandemic, we adapted our response to not only ensure the continued and safe implementation of our activities but to help communities better prepare themselves and mitigate its impact. Door-to-door and social media awareness campaigns effectively reached over 32,000 community members while hygiene kits and face masks distribution reached over 76,000 people. Additionally, we are actively facilitating the safe reopening of businesses and schools and supporting children and educators in the meantime with a PIN-created distance learning curriculum implemented through smartphone applications.

The vast majority of internal refugees in Dohuk province live in official refugee camps, while around 120,000 people live in thoroughly unsuitable conditions such as unofficial camps, schools, mosques or in torsos of buildings with a minimum of protection against the changing weather. In the winter, when temperatures in Iraq fall below zero, it was essential to provide materials to the most vulnerable persons to help them to some extent protect their improvised homes against the cold. With this aim in the Sumel district and in cooperation with its partner organisation Al Masalla, PIN distributed material aid which included tarpaulins for shelters, mattresses, blankets, winter clothing, stoves and paraffin for heating.

Our humanitarian efforts had particularly intensified in response to the campaign to recapture the territory seized and controlled by ISIL for more than three years. The peak of this military campaign was the Mosul offensive, which lasted for nine months and had a devastating impact on both the civil infrastructure and the local civilians whom the armed group often used as human shields. Nearly 900,000 people fled the besieged city during the fighting and found refuge in improvised shelters, neighbouring cities, or host communities in areas that had already been retaken.

PIN was one of the very first international organisations to start providing immediate humanitarian aid and assistance to people directly inside Mosul in February 2017 when the military campaign was still ongoing. Once the fighting subsided, we expanded our activities into other retaken areas in Nineveh, Salah Al-Din, Kirkuk and West Anbar. Depending on the situation, we help people adapt their temporary shelters, repair their war-damaged homes, or equip their households with basic items. The most vulnerable households might receive a direct financial support to cover their basic day-to-day needs, or their labour-fit members are engaged in activities such as waste collection, cleaning, and minor restoration works, to earn some income. Since 2014, 38,000 people have benefited from a one-time grant or cash-for-work program. By repairing water supply networks, we also help restore access to safe drinking water and revitalise local farming activities.
 

After the war, in the southern province of Missan, PIN reconstructed more than fifty schools and sixty medical establishments, fire stations, sport halls and youth centres. The drinking water supply system had also been damaged during the war and therefore the reconstruction of water treatment plants was carried out, as well as the distribution of simple water purifying devices for households. The public sewage system was also repaired in Al Amarah city.

In cooperation with local authorities, PIN held health checks at schools carried out together with inoculations of children, lectures about hygiene, water and sanitation awareness lectures as well as illness prevention campaigns.  In the area of the Iraqi marshes, PIN focused on fighting malaria through the distribution of mosquito nets.