Violence Masking Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq: Oxfam
AMMAN - Oxfam warned in a report Monday that unabated violence in Iraq is masking a humanitarian crisis that has worsened since the US-led invasion in 2003, putting at risk almost eight million Iraqis.
“While horrific violence dominates the lives of millions of ordinary people inside Iraq, another kind of crisis, also due to the impact of war, has been slowly unfolding,” said the report by international relief agency Oxfam and a coalition of Iraqi non-governmental organisations. 
According to the 45-page report released in Amman, almost eight million Iraqis are in need of immediate emergency aid with children the hardest hit by worsening conditions. An estimated “43 percent of Iraqis suffer from ‘absolute poverty’.”
“Children are hit the hardest by the decline of living standards. Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 percent before the US-led invasion in 2003 to 28 percent now,” it said.
Among the eight million Iraqis in dire need of assistance are more than two million who are displaced within the country and more than two million who have sought refuge in neighbouring Jordan and Iraq.
Many of those fleeing are professionals whose exodus leaves Iraqi services in an ever more precarious state, said the report by Oxfam and the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI).
“The brain drain’ that Iraq is experiencing is further stretching already inadequate public services, as thousands of medical staff, teachers, water engineers, and other professionals are forced to leave the country,” it said.
The report criticised the Iraqi government and the international community and donors for not “adequately addressing this deteriorating situation.”
According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Peter Kessler, “there has been an abject denial of the impact, the humanitarian impact, of the war,” it said
The report castigated the Iraqi government and world community for focusing too much on reconstruction and building political institutions while overlooking the everyday needs of ordinary people.
“Funding for development and reconstruction in Iraq from the 22 Development Assistance Committee donors increased by 922 percent between 2003 and 2005 … whereas funding for humanitarian assistance declined by 47 percent,” it said.
“Political will must be found to improve the emergency support system for the poorest citizens, including the internally displaced,” said report entitled “Rising to the humanitarian challenge in Iraq.”
It noted that of the four million Iraqis who depend on food assistance, only 60 percent have access to rations from the government-run public distribution system, down from 96 percent in 2004.
The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since 2003, while 80 percent lack effective sanitation.
It urged the beleaguered government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to decentralise the distribution of aid, reinforce the legal framework for civil society organisations to operate, and double emergency cash allowances to widows and families to 200 dollars a month.
Foreign governments, especially the United States and Britain, should provide technical and financial assistance to Iraqi ministries to implement these policies and provide basic services, it added.
The report charged that the US-led coalition of governments who sent forces to Iraq failed to predict the spiral of violence and “as a consequence their emergency preparedness plan was insufficient to cope with increasing basic needs.”
“If people’s basic needs are left unattended, this will only serve to further destabilise the country,” it warned.
Copyright © AFP 2007
How can our leaders in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate allow the United States to create this painful, ugly world?
I just called Rep. Jane Harman’s office in Los Angeles about impeaching Bush and Cheney and her office assistant told me, “Speaker Pelosi has taken impeachment off the table.” (which we are all already painfully aware of).
And people think Gen. Petraeus is in charge of the Iraq agenda?!
It’s Pelosi!! All roads stop at her office!
This country must put the brakes on this Administration so we can begin the hard work of making reparations to the Iraqi people, particularly the children who have suffered. They are total innocents.
I am getting nowhere with Jane Harman. How on Earth can we get Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers and all the other members of the House and Senate to stop this heinous runaway train?
A national strike is a great idea, but even all the full page ads of every newspaper in the country wouldn’t get the average person to do anything! They don’t read!!
I know people are trying to call their congress persons, but look what happened to Cindy Sheehan!
Demonstrations won’t help. Is there anyone who can suggest what can be done to influence these elected leaders to perform their duty to the Constitution and IMPEACH?? They are running scared with their lips zipped shut. Why???!
Hey, the president told us to go shopping, so we might be unpatriotic if we continue to focus on the Iraqi disasters he wants to hide from us.
President Bush is confident in his actions because his ends (market value ruling Iraq) justifies his means (death, destruction, chaos, refugees, torture, mass incarceration, lying, etc…) in his mind.
What can we do?
Be active.
The power is not in the political process.
The power is in the education and opinions of the people.
The education and opinions of the people are based on the media.
The media is controlled by monopoly interests, but the internet is opening things up.
So be active and work to free the media from monopoly control.
Otherwise, every issue will continue to be judged by a misinformed American public.
67% of the American people mistakenly thought Hussein was responsible for 9/11 at the time when the War in Iraq started. This is a failure of our democracy, our media, and our President.
We can do better.
This is a continuation of the “Wounded Knee Policy” of our government. Everything that is happening in Iraq has been foreshadowed by the way the native people of the United States have been treated. Googgle - Bureau of Iraqi Affairs.
Some American commanders in Iraq even refer to Iraq as “indian country” when they leave their bases.
Violence Masking Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq
Really?!? Wow. Who would have guessed it!
Violence causes humanitarian crisis.
Gee. I never would have thought of that were it not for Oxfam.
“Some American commanders in Iraq even refer to Iraq as “indian country” when they leave their bases.”
What some sick bastards.
Here in Bush country where I live, my representatives are Mel Martinez, chairman of the RNC and Ric “Cheeseburger Bill” Keller-R. They are both completely useless on any issue.
Depressing.
There was a troubling story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (July 28, 2007), “Sounding off: Iraq veterans look back”.
“…
Staff Sgt. Melissa Meger, 26, served as a medic, working in trauma centers and teaching health and…Every day, hundreds of bodies are found in Baghdad that are just dead and put in the gutter. I think if we just left, they wouldn’t advance any further and might go backwards.”
Advance further??? Sounds like life was safer before the US invasion, and we’ve now created a sustained situation of genocide. Let’s take this account literally. For instance, if “hundreds” means 300. 300 x 365 = 109,500 dead/year in the Bagdad area alone. Is it all random/happenstance sectarian violence, or is it something else? Almost makes one wonder what the Blackwater guys doing over there, and what sort of oversight there is.
The Bush-Cheney Regime’s Iraq strategy is very simple and as obvious as the nose at the end of one’s face. The more chaos, death & destruction that the US can create, the eaasier it is to secure the Iraqi oil fields.
“Liberation”…
Watch “The Ruling Class” on the Sundance Channel today.
Bush and Congress have cut the budgets for the poor in this country by billions. Why does anyone think they care about the hell they created in Iraq?
gen·o·cide (jĕn’ə-sīd’) pronunciation
n.
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
We are asked to give generously to stop genocide in Darfur, Rwanda, and elsewhere. We remember the death of six million Jews in Hitler’s gas chambers. Remember the Armenians. You can go to jail for remembering them in Turkey.
What do we call the killing of over a million Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan? What do we call the desire to raze Iran with nuclear weapons? Bringing democracy and freedom to the Middle East.
Let’s start calling it like it is. Stop the genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan. Get us out of the Middle East! Ask the Israelis to stop the genocide in Palestine. STOP GIVING OR SELLING EVERYBODY WEAPONS!!!
If the poor and the vanishing middle class in America can be considered a “national, racial, political, or ethnic group,” then we are not far from instituting genocide in America — again.
Lets stop the pussyfooting around and start calling a spade a spade. Stop the genocide in Iraq, get our troops home! That will be one small step towards sanity, then let’s work on the same for Afghanistan. And let’s stop giving others weapons to do our killing for us.
We all have to stop this you know! The fact is this is now our fault since we allowed our government to run off and do its own thing. There is going to be a lot of blood in the streets however death is preferable to living in a dictatorship!
But on the other side of this gigantic crime against the peace our ‘leaders’ are sending yet another 30 billion dollars worth of weapons to a nuclear armed nation known to make premptive attacks on it’s neighbors.
Iran hasen’t attacked anyone in living memory…
We have been war taxed by Israel for 50 years so why don’t we have representation in their government, they sure have a representation in ours?
But wait! All will be well! WalMart is dedicating two feet of shelf space in 425 of their 3,300 stores across the south and midwest to …
FAITH-BASED ACTION TOYS!!!
The toy developers say that there is a large niche in their target market (3 to 12 year olds) for “God-honouring” toys which reflect Christian teachings and morality.
How ironic that the parents who will buy these plastic paragons of virtue (all men, by the way - Samson, Golaith, Moses, Jesus) likely voted for and continue to support the administration causing such suffering for hundreds of thousands of living women, children, and men.
No need to teach children about real suffering of real human beings and how everyone’s thoughts, words, and actions either alleviate or exacerbate it. Teach them instead that they can BUY morality and virtue at their nearest WalMart.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6916287.stm
“The number of Iraqi children who are born underweight or suffer from malnutrition has increased sharply since the US-led invasion, according to a report by Oxfam and a network of about 80 aid agencies.”
.
Is this what Bush means by ‘no child left behind?’ If these are “Christian Values” I can see why the crowd voted for Barabbas.
.
PS: iowairish; are those FAITH-BASED ACTION TOYS for personal use?
Yes of course there would be “collateral damage” and ongoing suffering as a result of invading and bombing a country using our spent nuclear waste, namely DU. Not that Mr. Bush frets about that anyhow.
This article “Dangers of a Cornered Bush” features Dr. Justin Franks, author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, and after 2 additional years of observing Mr. Bush states:
George W. Bush is without conscience, and it would require a lengthy series of clinical sessions to find out what happened to it.
He lies — not just to us, but to himself as well. What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt — for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him.
He has always had a sadistic streak: from blowing up frogs, to shooting his siblings with a b-b-gun, to branding fraternity pledges with white-hot coat hangers.
Bush likes to break things, needs to break things. And this is most shockingly seen in how he is systematically destroying our armed forces.
It may well be that, unconsciously, the government represents his neglectful parents, and those helped by the government represent the siblings he resents. If George W. Bush wanted to destroy his own family, he could scarcely have done better. Thanks to him, no Bush is likely to be elected to high office for generations to come.
Dr. Franks also discusses 3 likely scenarios, any of which could take place in the remainder of his term.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/dangers-of-a-cornered-geo_b_58429.html
It’s heartbreaking to see the suffering of the Iraqi people just so a few wealthy elite in both parties of Congress can make themselves wealthier through war profiteering and control of the Iraqis’ oil. It is THEIR oil and not America’s, Israel’s and the UK’s. The U.S. has gotten away with a HUGE war crime.
Truly the LIGHT will visit you with pain unbearable and your heartlessness and your vast evil hubris will return unto you, a monster of your own creation.
All the Powers of LIGHT are arrayed against you, and Judgment is come upon you.
Look at the callousness of the people who talk incessantly for deliverance through impeachment of your own demons, but cannot write even one sentence here to be recorded in the great book of Karma as a simple gesture of basic goodness.
Beware, you have little time to redeem yourselves.
I stand here as witness for the LIGHT.
O Most High,please end my mission for these are a people who are blind, deaf. Thou cannot reach souls of stone.
Satya Vijay
Om Tat Sat
Rah Maat Ta’at
NurEllohimMagna
Aymon
Just a question that came to mind after reading the post about UFO’s from Cleargirl above.
Here is what I wrote to Peter Jennings and it would be fun if I was not the only one to catch this:
“Hi Peter,
I saw your program a few weeks ago and was wondering if anyone but me noticed this:
When they ran film clips of a Sci Fi movie, it may have been “The day the world stood still”, one of the extras or stand in actors standing in the front line of spectators who turned and ran away when the Aliens started firing there ray guns, was a man who looked just like George Bush Sr.
I think he was also the man pointing to the sky in another clip in the program.
Did you catch it?
Please let me know if you or anyone sees him or his double in the Clips.
Thanks, Jim”
From what i personally know about Big George, the CIA being involved in getting the world afraid of a world threat even if it is fiction is not so fictional.
Love, Jim
The Iraqi Parliment goes on an extended vacation and Congress follows for a month. That is 30 more days of misery for the homeless, scare food, no potable water, no health care for anyone, especially the children and little aid in sight. Lord, I hope those few chosen elites sleep well at night on their summer get a ways. I hope they are all bombarded with angry citizes giving them a piece of their minds.
I think one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen was a doc called ‘Iraq’s Missing Billions’ at one stage of which a father of two new babies brings them to a hospital for which US contractors were paid over $40 billion to build and there are no medicine stores, no working facilities, no proper sewer drainage or sterilization.
Both of those children died. His newborn son for lack of an antibiotic that was sitting in storage cases at the airport under contractor guard and his newborn daughter for lack of a small vial of surfactant that you only need one vial of to clear the fluid from the lungs of an infant in respiratory distress.
I saw the look on his face and I would not be at all surprised to see that man visiting destruction on American soil.
If those were my children, I’d be right there beside him.