The military offensive launched on 17 October against Daesh in the city of Mosul, Iraq, and currently underway may involve and displace 1.5 million civilians.
Giving an immediate response to this new humanitarian crisis that is long overdue: this is the objective with which we have developed the emergency programme 'Darna' (Our Home) in advance, thanks to the support of the Otto per Mille Office of the Tavola Valdese and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano.
For months now, the international coalition against Daesh had been gaining positions, gradually approaching the group's stronghold cities in Iraq. Important cities such as Falluja had been recaptured, and there are already over 250,000 displaced people registered by the United Nations, whose humanitarian response plan is only 58% covered.
The new IDPs will add to the more than 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) caused by the Daesh offensive in the summer of 2014, who are still living in camps in northern Iraq and the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (KRG), where we operate with our 3 offices in Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaymayniyah.
This is why we have prepared a series of short- and medium-term actions to respond to the emergency. From today and for the next eight months we plan to reach 30,000 people with hygiene kits and field kitchens: materials defined as 'life-saving' that in the immediacy of a crisis are necessary to prevent epidemics by enabling people to prepare their own food.
This will be complemented by the work of a Mobile Health Unit that will provide care, guidance and psychological support with special attention to women and children. In a second phase, the medical staff on duty at the clinics we run in KRG as part of other projects will be sent to the Mobile Unit on a weekly basis, to make home check-ups on the basis of the cases that will be reported to us by the other organisations working in the field. Our staff, already working in the Erbil and Dohuk areas to assist displaced Iraqi and Syrian refugee families, will also try to provide support to the newly displaced people fleeing Mosul.
The orientation, information and psychosocial support projects that have already been in operation for 2 years will be readjusted to meet the new needs.
Already since 2009, we have been working in the areas of the Nineveh Plain that have fallen under the control of Daesh, with educational, school and minority protection projects, and have continued to accompany the local population when they have had to seek refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. Following the advance of Daesh, we have remained continuously active with humanitarian assistance projects and longer-term programmes, focusing particularly on youth, inter-community dialogue, social cohesion and peacebuilding. Actions needed to go beyond the emergency, and to prepare the ground for the return of local populations to areas that will gradually be liberated from the Daesh presence.
