Humanitarian briefing on the crisis in Iraq
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Iraq's humanitarian emergency requires
immediate recognition and support. Above all, it is fundamentally rooted
in a protection and human rights crisis, which together are fuelling a
climate of lawlessness and impunity with profound consequences for innocent
civilians. Indeed, the sheer scale of violence directed against Iraqi civilians
is unparalleled to any other emergency in the world today. The provision
of basic social services has been severely compromised by insecurity, population
movements, brain-drain, and an incremental breakdown of public service
infrastructure and systems. Furthermore, families and communities continue
to be fractured by conflict and the politics of identity. The sharply deteriorating
humanitarian situation over the past few years has yielded a number of
devastating indicators: 2 million Iraqis are now estimated to have fled
the country; and nearly 1.9 million are estimated to be internally displaced
persons (IDPs), of which about 800,000 individuals have been uprooted since
February 2006. This means that almost one in six Iraqis is now living in
displacement. An estimated 4 million are also considered to be acutely
food insecure and entirely dependent on a fledgling public distribution
system (PDS) for their basic nutritional requirements, while another 8
million are under threat of becoming food insecure should the ration system
completely collapse. Escalating violence and human rights violations, compounded
by a diminishing ability to meet basic needs and to absorb any further
shocks, are pushing already vulnerable Iraqis into a crisis of survival.
This situation can only be addressed through a concerted effort by all
concerned parties to support an empowered role for the UN to act as a neutral
mediator based on humanitarian imperatives and to re-establish the conditions
for humanitarian space so that the government and people of Iraq can be
assisted in averting a full-scale humanitarian disaster.