LWF offers winter relief goods in northern Iraq

DOHUK, Iraq/ GENEVA, 9 November 2015 (LWI) - “We thought it would be a few days, until things calmed down”, Nadine says. “My parents said: go visit your uncle. It’s just a short field trip. That field trip has lasted a year and a half now.”

The young woman has been living in Davudiya refugee camp, northern Iraq, for a year. The Christian family fled their home village, Bartolla, in August 2014, when Islamic State militia started advancing on the Nineva plain. They now live in a camp for internally displaced people in Kurdistan, together with Yazidi, Muslim and Turkman families. All of them fled a militant group that killed and enslaved anyone who did not share their faith.

Davudiya camp, located about an hour from the Kurdish city of Dohuk, northern Iraq, is one of the camps supported by The Lutheran World Federation. The LWF installed water pipes, storage tanks and latrines and provided people with hygiene kits. “Thank you to all the people who are helping us,” Nadine’s father Theriakos says. “We really appreciate that. This is a stupid war of narrow-minded people.”

Young people want to leave

The family is among the lucky ones to have a container to sleep in. The camp’s location in the mountains makes it impossible to house people in tents like the 17 other camps for displaced people around Dohuk. In winter, the temperature drops below zero and it snows. Already cool autumn rains have turned the streets and grounds within the camp into a mud pit, where children play, some of them still wearing sandals and socks. In the containers, families of four to six people share a small room for sleeping.

There is no work for the people in the camp, many of whom do not speak the local Kurdish language. Theriakos’ wife, Sara, a nurse, sometimes helps neighbors who have fallen ill and has applied with the camp management to work at the health post. Other than that, the family passes the time visiting neighbors and playing cards.

“We don’t know how to continue like this,” Theriakos says. “I am an old man, I want to stay but the young people want to leave.” While he speaks, images of immigrants crossing borders in Europe can be seen on TV in the small room, where 10 people have assembled around an improvised dinner table.

Safe but exhausted

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 8.2 million people in northern Iraq need humanitarian assistance as a result of the IS advance and terror. Around the city of Dohuk, 18 camps have been set up for internally displaced people, four more for refugees from other countries, housing a total of more than 550,000 people. Most will spend a second winter in extremely run-down tents which were only meant as a short-term solution. More than 700,000 people live outside camps, many of them in communal shelters, churches and unfinished buildings.

“It’s difficult for us. Nobody knows us, nobody understands us,” 75-year-old Rejena Pulse Isaa says. She and her son, who lost a leg in the Iraq-Iran war, share a room in a sports center with an elderly couple: four people in about 16 square meters. They have pinned church calendars and images of saints on the walls, above the piles of blankets and household items they received in previous distributions. Outside, in the hall, families have used cardboard boxes to build walls about one meter high and separate some private space.

Dread of winter

The situation is even more congested in St Peter and Paul church, Dohuk. The congregation has taken in nine families. As 31 people live in one room, the noise level is exhausting. Men, women and children have black circles under their eyes. “We feel safe here, but we are very tired,” Ban, 48 years old and mother to two girls, says. Her 12-year-old daughter will miss this school year, as there are not enough classrooms in Dohuk. “Winter is coming, the toilets are outside and it gets very cold in here,” another mother says. “We do not have enough warm clothing for the children.”

Even the families with small children are now thinking about making the dangerous journey to Europe. “We are afraid, we know we can die crossing the Mediterranean,” they say. “But we prefer that to staying here. Here, every day feels like dying.”

LWF is supporting the internally displaced and refugees in and around Dohuk with food, winter clothing, hygiene kits, water and sanitation kits, kerosene and psychosocial support. ACT Alliance has issued a new appeal, calling for donations to distribute food, winter clothing and kerosene for heaters to 400,000 people around Dohuk.

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Braving the cold in Iraq

Climate in the Kurdistan region is extreme: after a hot summer, displaced people will now face a second winter with below zero temperatures and snow. Many people have lived in tents and unfinished buildings since they had to flee. To survive the cold season, they need kerosene for heaters, basic food donations and warm clothing.

LWF has been supporting people in Dohuk, Chamanke and various other camps with food, water and hygiene infrastructure and winter relief goods. Unable to work and having used up their savings, this is the only means of help many of them have.

Iraq, Dohuk, 9 November 2015

Photos: LWF/C. Kästner, Seivan Salim

Khanke refugee camp near Dohuk is home to about 3,000 internally displaced families. Once thinking they would be able to return home within weeks, they now face a second winter in tents.

Many children, like those here in Davudiya camp, still have no proper winter clothing. Families need of kerosene to heat their tents and containers.

A tent is Shekhan camp. LWF built concrete foundations to provide some insulation and to elevate the ground surface of the tents so water would not enter.

Even more difficult is the situation of families living outside camps in unfinished buildings. Many do not receive regular support.

The house this family stays in does not have doors or insulation, and only plastic sheets for windows. A local pastoralist lets the Yazidi family stay here. In turn, they help him with his livestock.

LWF supports refugees and many other families in the region with regular food distributions. A box of rice, beans, canned food and oil lasts about 15 days.

For many internally displaced people who fled Islamic State, these food baskets are essential. The internally displaced no income and used all their savings to survive the first weeks after fleeing. Some seven to nine families share mass shelters with little space and privacy.

Internally displaced people have decorated their shelters with the few personal items they could bring. Most still hope to return home.

The younger generations, however, think more and more about leaving Iraq altogether and making a new life in another country.