Charity warnings as Iraq attacks continue
The training of an Iraqi police force should be given the highest priority to help stabilise the country, aid workers warned today.
Charities including Britain's Christian Aid told UK MPs that humanitarian organisations were being targeted because they were seen as no different from coalition forces.
Iraqi civilians were also continuing to face widespread looting and an upsurge in crime due to the instability.
Appearing before the British Commons International Development Committee in London, Oliver Burch, Christian Aid’s emergency programme manager, described the situation as “really serious”.
He added that a high proportion of the Iraqi population did not differentiate humanitarian workers from the coalition soldiers.
“I think there is a sense that time is really running out,” he said.
Mr Burch called for training of Iraqi security personnel to be prioritised and for a UN-led international peacekeeping effort to be also put in place.
Rob MacGillivray, of Save the Children, said the recent attack on the UN headquarters in Iraq had brought a “depreciating situation into very sharp focus”.
The panel of charity workers also called for the Coalition Provisional Authority to focus on planning for the needs of internally displaced Iraqis - many who fled following the 1991 war.
In its evidence submitted to the committee, Christian Aid described the humanitarian situation in Iraq as “not so much acute as precarious”.
It stressed that Baghdad still did not have effective sewage treatment and improvements in water supply had been disrupted due to sabotage.
Electricity supplies are estimated to be meeting just over half the current demand compared with two-thirds before the war.
Raja Jarrah, programme director of Care International, said: “We certainly feel that the prospects of improvement are no better than they were six months ago.”
He added: “There are no signs it’s going to improve in the short term.”
