Centro de prensa

Declaración

Statement by Dan Toole Director of the Office of Emergency Programmes

During the vaccination work, I saw women standing in line waiting. As I said to some of your home stations, I don't think children were just dying to be immunized. No child is just waiting to get pricked by the needle but I certainly saw mothers ready to have their children there, ready to know that they can protect their children from measles. Measles as you know in the past has been one of the biggest killers in emergencies, particularly when children are malnourished or ill. Measles can kill thousands of children very very quickly.

I left Erbil feeling rather excited actually and very enthused about the potential for additional activities in the North working on capacity building with the government, talking about strengthening their capacity to respond to those Iraqis who have fled the South to move to the North. I also was excited about the potential of increased UNICEF activity based in the North to be able to provide assistance in the South.
Unfortunately, just days after I left a series of bomb attacks in Erbil then destroyed that image of relative peace in the North and it really underlined for me how fragile the situation is for children - it can be fine one day but then the next the whole situation changes and the vulnerability of children is clearly in evidence. The violence in Iraq continues and the situation has deteriorated very
significantly in the last 18 months for children and it continues to worsen. We have a rapidly downward spiral of violence creating real chaos for children in their lives and let me just perhaps give you a few of the information that I have from the ground and from our teams there.

As you know from the High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, four million people are now estimated to be displaced, half of those are children. Just perhaps to put that in perspective that is more that the population of the state of Connecticut here in the United States and if you are from Europe that is the size of Ireland. People on the move leaving their home forced to flee and go elsewhere.

More than half of the population is children. Twothirds of the Iraqi child population has no access to clean water - that is perhaps one of our greatest concerns. Without clean water headed into the hot summer seasons we will have diarrhea# we will have dehydration and we probably will have increased numbers of deaths. We have already seen the first cases of cholera inside Iraq that to me this is a gigantic red flag saying we need to act very very quickly to increase the availability of clean water and sanitation.

A third issue that I would like [to mention] is really attendance in schools.Iraqis can be very proud of their history of support to education: the number of girls and women who are educated. That situation is changing very
dramatically.

That is a huge drop off of children who actively participate in school every day and that is for two main reasons. One: violence - their parents are afraid to send them to school and there are good reasons for that fear. Second is missing teachers - if you travel around Iraq you see schools that are empty and schools that are terribly over crowded and so many, many children are no longer attending school. Making that worse and perhaps talking about the fact that many schools don't have teachers is the brain drain inside Iraq.

What we know is that of the thousands who have left Iraq and the millions who are now refugees externally many of those are professionals - they are doctors, they are nurses, and they are teachers. Children will bear the brunt of that brain drain because those are the people who train children and those are the people who work with them to make sure that they stay healthy.

I think first and foremost the violence must end and UNICEF can't do that. We cannot solve the problem of school attendance if parents are afraid to send their children to school. We can't improve good nutrition if mothers are afraid to go shopping for groceries to feed those children.

So the violence must end. That is the first clear recommendation.

We also need additional support and that is really the reason for this report today and the launch of our immediate needs. The Jordanian and Syrian governments have done a tremendous job of so far welcoming the refugees as guests, as Arab brothers and that is a tremendous plus. We now have agreement from both governments to help with primary school education and inside the Immediate Needs you will see requirements for the next six months of what is necessary to ensure that all children whether inside Iraq or outside Iraq have access to school.
They can actually attend school and go to the health center to get their vaccinations and their medical supplies. I would also note that UNICEF has never left Iraq. There has been a lot of discussion about international staff, national staff. UNICEF last year spent approximately $57 million inside Iraq doing things liking trucking water, improving water and sanitation in schools, providing nutrition supplements
and medical supplies throughout the country. That is possible because we have twenty dedicated Iraqi staff who have stayed in the country and who work day in and day out despite the security problems. We also have almost 200 monitors, Iraqi nationals, who help us track, to make sure that the food, the supplies, the nutrition and the medicines actually get to who they are required for and secondly we have a system of rapid response - two monitors each have a key they can actually unlock a container in acute emergencies and release medical supplies on instructions from Amman. So when there is an explosion or an acute need we actually can get those monitors to release preposition supplies and respond.

The request today asks for about $42 million dollars, that is enough for the basic requirements for the next six months. It is very much in line with the appeals that have been issued by UNHCR and others. We work very closely with them to make sure that we are working together and not overlapping.

We have already as UNICEF issued almost $3 million of internal reserves to start this operation and this week we are looking to release an additional $7 million from our internal reserve. So a total of $10 million from UNICEF resources to jump start these activities in hopes that the donors will then come forward quickly.

With those funds we have already rehabilitated a number of water supply networks for about 3.4 million people. We provide basic goods to 500,000 people in Rein, Erbil, Falluja and Ramadi. And we have managed to do the immunization campaign that we have talked about that are actually so essential to protecting children. We have also improved, and I have visited Erbil, a number of schools where we have improved water and sanitation in schools so children actually have clean water and sanitation in the school building itself.

What is clear to me particularly coming out of Erbil is our internal reserves are totally inadequate to the problem at hand and thus the immediate needs and appeal to donors for additional funds. We believe that Iraq is at a watershed, we believe that Iraqi children need help now. We are headed into the summer months as I have said there is much that Iraq can do and is doing there, there is a tremendous amount that Jordon and Syria can also do. We need funds to be partners with them. I am left again feeling positive in that when I see an immunization campaign such as I saw in Erbil I know we can do things if we have the funds, if we have the ability to get in the provide assistance. That is what we need the funds for today. That is why we need to act now.

So thank you.