Catalan NGOs, next to Mosul one year after its release

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Catalan NGO next to Mosul. Source: Europa Press.

Catalan NGOs support the Kurdish population of Mosul one year after the fighting between the Islamic State (EI) and the Iraqi forces that devastated the city. To this day, the area continues in ruins and the child population is unprotected

Catalan NGOs like Azadí-plataforma de solidaritat amb el poble kurd, the Lliga dels Drets dels Pobles, Justícia i Pau or Metges sense Fronteres ask for the restoration of the rights of the Kurdish population to Mosul one year after the city's liberation to hands of the Islamic State. According to the NGO, Metges sense Fronteres, during the battle of Mosul, nine of the 13 public hospitals suffered damage and this reduced the health care capacity and the number of hospital beds by 70%.

The same NGO denounces that the reconstruction of sanitary facilities has been extremely slow and there are still less than 1,000 beds available for a population of 1.8 million people. This figure represents half of the minimum international standards for the provision of health services in a humanitarian context.

Priority to the protection of infants

A recent report by the organization Save the Children tries to raise awareness about the conditions of children and adolescents who are trying to regain the normality of their lives in the city after having lived for years the violence of war and horrors of the occupation of the Islamic State.

The report indicates that 80% of the child population interviewed does not feel safe walking the streets. It also notes that only 1 out of 10 children can remember something happy about their lives and that 72% of people in charge of these children suffer from depression and the mental health of adults has been affected by the conflict.

A solution is, according to the same NGO, to find support for schools but almost half of theirs have been destroyed during the war. Additionally, returning to school is another fight since almost a third of teens have spent their years of training under ISIS, which has transformed their schools into battlefields.

In 2018, the United Nations funding for mental health programs for children in Iraq has only covered 7% of what was requested at the beginning. Save the Children asks the international community to prioritize the protection of children and increase funds to improve their mental and psychosocial health.