IRAQ: Iraqis living in squalor - Oxfam report
- 00:00:26
- ITN Source
IRAQ: Iraqis living in squalor - Oxfam report
Oxfam says nearly one-third of the population in Iraq is in need of humanitarian aid. In a report on deteriorating conditions in the country, the international relief agency says the Iraqi government is failing to provide basic essentials such as water, sanitation, food, and shelter for up to eight million people. It warns the continuing violence is masking a humanitarian crisis that has grown worse since the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein four years ago. Hunger and unemployment, it says, are particularly acute among an estimated 2.2 million who've been internally displaced. Oxfam's statistics showed that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, 15 percent of Iraqis regularly cannot afford enough to eat and 70 percent lack clean drinking water, all sharp increases since 2003. Living in a house built out of cooking oil cans, amid mounds of rotting garbage, in a rubbish dump on the outskirts of Sadr City, 55-year old Umm Ali is typical of those Iraqis the British charity has written about. Sectarian violence forced Ali and her family of eight to leave their homes and seek refuge in the sprawling Shi'ite slum of Sadr City. With no running water and no electricity, they struggle to survive the stifling summer heat. Parts of the impoverished slum which is home to two million people, is filled by pools of dark green sewage, left to bake in the 40 degrees centigrade (104 degrees Fahrenheit) heat. The City's ageing water system was crumbling before 2003. But the postwar looting of a sewage treatment plant brought the crisis to a new level. Broken water lines allow raw sewage to seep into the regular water supply. Frequent electrical shortages stop the municipal water pumps, and innovative means of pumping water from the dry pipes end up bringing in extra sewage. People siphon water from hoses or collect water leaking from broken pipes which stretch across an area covered with piles of broken bricks. Umm Ali's family live in a house they built out of old cooking oil cans. Dried mud is packed between the cans to keep out the wind and the dust. Inside her makeshift home flies cover everything. Ali said there is a shortage of accessible water and the temperature in their home stifling, "Cans are so hot, you can't lean against them. It is burning" she says, so she soaks cloths with what little water she can get to put on her children's heads to cool them down. Mohammed Abdul Kadhim lives in a shack with his family of four in Sadr City. He is also worried about the lack of drinking water, "There is a pipe but we don't know where the water is coming from or if we can drink it," he said. Scores of displaced Shi'ite families have made the rubbish dump their home. They are living in unsanitary conditions in tents, crude shacks, or squatting in the ruins of empty buildings.
ITN Source | August 2, 2007
