Decline and fall of a nation's people

Decline and fall of a nation's people

Amid all the reports of death, injury and destruction in Iraq, it is perhaps too easy to overlook the plight of those people who are forced to flee their homes to live in another country. It is estimated that over 2,000 people a day seek refuge in neighbouring Jordan and Syria, yet both countries are struggling to provide for the more than two million who fled Iraq before the 2003 US-led invasion. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) believes there are a further two million displaced Iraqis within Iraq, who have been forced to live away from their homes in an attempt to avoid the fighting.
In an attempt to improve the conditions of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, Syria and Iraq itself, the UNHCR is doubling the amount of aid this year to provide shelter, food, health care and, and often overlooked but vitally important component of aid, education. What is particularly worrying the UNHCR is that many children have not received any form of education for at least two or three years. This raises the prospect of the "potential emergence of a generation of uneducated Iraqi youth" says the UNHCR. Certainly this is not an unknown phenomenon as it has been seen in other countries, including in the region, that have suffered from long-term internal strife.
An additional factor that is extremely disturbing is the many thousands of Iraqis who are narrating to the aid agencies experiences of torture, sexual and gender-based violence, bombings and other forms of violent attack, all of whom are in need of urgent medical treatment and counselling. Sadly, while world attention is directed towards loss of life on both sides, the prospect of lifelong damage to individuals is all but neglected. Iraq is called the cradle of civilisation; hopefully it will not become its coffin.