Kesher Talk

Humanitarian news in Iraq. Every week I get an email from a group of international development consultants, with a round-up of news from around the world related to development projects. They also have a weekly quiz on obscure political and geogrpahic topics and job postings. This week's email includes the following:

IRAQ: Invoking "the terrifying impact" of war on Iraq, grief for the dead and anguish for the living, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed March 26 to the divided UN Security Council to unite on a common purpose and to the international community to respond swiftly and generously to a new "flash appeal" for humanitarian aid for the Iraqi people.

The UN's World Food Program said the government-run food distribution system was still partially functioning in South and Central Iraq, where food agents are delivering incomplete rations and this month's distribution of incomplete rations has already started in areas unaffected by the ongoing conflict. But the WFP said it was difficult to calculate to what extent these distributions would affect overall food security in South/Central Iraq. The distributions will improve some families' food reserves, but WFP lacks precise details about the size of rations being delivered and the distribution cycle, which usually takes a month to complete. The agency is still operating under the assumption that most families, who are entirely dependent on monthly food rations for survival, will run out of food by the end of April.

Mercy Corps staff in Kuwait, who are closely monitoring a growing humanitarian crisis in southern Iraq and preparing to deliver relief supplies once the security conditions inside Iraq permit, that conditions inside Basra - a city of more than 1.3 million people in southern Iraq - are of a particular concern to aid workers in the region. Basra's electricity has been cut off and as a result more than half of the civilian population does not have access to clean drinking water. U.S. General Tommy Franks, addressing a news conference at his command headquarters earlier in the week, said "humanitarian assistance ships are loaded and we'll begin to deliver needed humanitarian assistance -- food, water, medicine -- to Iraqis within the next few days." The people of the port city of Umm Qasr and Basra "will in the days ahead be able to have more access to food and more access to water than they've had in decades," he said.

posted by Judith @ 3/27/2003 09:01:08 PM