Providing psychosocial support, child protection, creating safe places where the trauma of violence can be identified - and possibly treated.
These are the issues at the heart of our 'Ahlain!' (Welcome) project, supported by UNICEF, for the protection of and assistance to displaced Iraqi children, who have fled the war and the fury of Daesh in Iraq.
The intervention focuses on the governorate of Dohuk, where thousands of Iraqi families, mostly belonging to the Ezid and Christian communities of the Nineveh Plain and Sinjar area, have found refuge since the summer of 2014, when Daesh advanced into Mosul and the surrounding territories.
The project, now in its second phase and active for the whole of 2016, takes place in the IDP camps where families have found shelter - particularly in those of Bjet Kandala and Sharya - but also in the urban area of Sheikhan, where since the beginning of the crisis we have worked to identify families in particular need, who had remained excluded from the formal circuit of reception and support services.
It was precisely in Sheikhan that we had intervened with some humanitarian aid and initial assistance programmes at the beginning of the emergency, in the summer of 2014, and we continue to operate there by providing psycho-social support, mental health, care and protection services for displaced children and support for their families, with awareness-raising meetings on issues of protection from violence towards children and women.
We also work in the governorate's mental health facilities, in collaboration with doctors and specialists, referring the most delicate cases that are identified, to treat the traumas of war that threaten to seize the future of so many children.
By organising specific training for operatorsÉ™, and supporting existing family mutual aid groups, we are attempting to plant those seeds that will enable the fruit of this work to be harvested in the future, including through the creation of databases that will be useful for monitoring the quality of the intervention, so that it can also be useful when this emergency is over.
"At the same time, 'Ahlein' envisages the creation of three stable clinics to provide psycho-social support, while a mobile unit provides counselling and therapy where it is most needed, visiting families in the areas where they have found accommodation.
As always, the aim of the project is to pay special attention to the groups that feel the effects of conflict the most, and who pay the highest price for this new state of emergency: children.
Like the other health and education programmes, 'Ahlain!' also fits into a broader framework of work in which we are involved in the protection of children in conflict areas, particularly in Syria and Iraq.
