Faren for en voldsom død i det konfliktramte land har tvunget bistandsorganisationer til at køre indsatsen fra nabolandene, og det bringer dem langt væk fra modtagerne – IRIN-serie om Irak i dag ti år efter Saddam Husseins fald.
DUBAI, 1 May 2013 (IRIN): Aid work in Iraq has always had a bumpy ride, from the restrictions imposed under former president Saddam Hussein to the corruption associated with the Oil-for-Food Programme. But it has arguably never been as challenging as in the last decade.
Aid work was tightly controlled under Hussein’s rule, according to Yaseen Ahmed Abbas, president of the Iraq Red Crescent Society.
“The Society was managed by the government – completely,” he told IRIN. “We have much more freedom now. You cannot compare.”
But aid work in the post-2003 era takes place in a more “dangerous and volatile operating environment”, according to the UN.
Dangers limit access
Just a few months after the US-led invasion in 2003, a truck bomb targeting UN headquarters in the capital, Baghdad, killed 22 UN staff, including the special representative of the UN Secretary-General in Iraq, Sérgio Vieira de Mello.
Between 2003 and 2007, an estimated 94 aid workers in the country died and 248 were injured.
In response, aid agencies largely managed their operations remotely from Jordan, at a cost to the quality of the services, aid workers say.
Aid throughout the past decade “was mainly limited to the provision of supplies and training from abroad, without direct population contact and the ability to provide prompt and targeted adjustment to the support,” Gustavo Fernandez states.
He headed Médecins sans Frontières’s mission in Iraq from 2008 to 2010 and wrote this in a recent article in the Lancet.
Since 2009, security has improved, but aid workers are still exposed to considerable risk, the UN says.
In January 2010, for example, a bomb devastated a hotel in Baghdad containing the offices of the International Rescue Committee, injuring staff and destroying assets.
Hazards for local aid workers
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