Iraq: 4.5m children living in poverty

Indicators for 2021 published yesterday by the independent Human Rights Commission in Iraq reveal statistics regarding the overall condition of the country’s population. The report covers issues related to life, security, and liberty, as well as those linked to education, health, unemployment, and the loss of parents.

The commission’s report notes that there are around five million orphans, which amounts to five per cent of the total number of orphans worldwide. This reflects the enormity of the human losses and catastrophes which have had an impact on Iraq’s population, particularly children, as a result of violence and those associated with the war on terrorism.

The human rights statistics do not end with children’s loss of their parents. They reveal that more than a million children are in the labour market due to the acute poverty of their families. There are also 45,000 children without official documents because of their parents’ affiliation with Daesh. According to the report, 4.5 million children are in families which exist below the poverty line. Violence has been reported by at least five thousand families.

READ: 20% increase in number of children in war zones

Founding member of the commission Ali Al-Bayati told Asharq Al-Awsat that the number of orphans cited was provided by UNICEF, whereas the rest of the indicators were taken from figures published by the Ministry of Planning in Baghdad and other UN agencies, or from complaints received by the commission.

The indicators also show that 25 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. This figure includes the autonomous Kurdistan Region. The unemployment rate, says the report, stands at 14 per cent. Just under 600 Iraqi citizens — 596 — were killed as a result of violence this year.

The accumulated number of persons missing since 2014 has now reached 8,000. The commission noted that the Iraqi authorities have failed the missing persons and their families by not carrying out the necessary investigations into their disappearance and compensating their families financially. Most of the cases of loss or forced disappearances occurred in the provinces that were occupied by Daesh after 2014.

The commission also pointed out that ten activists and journalists have been detained. Moreover, it received 900 complaints relating to torture and the abuse of prisoners, practices that were never investigated by the authorities.

As for the education and health sectors, the report reveals the horrible conditions in which school pupils and students are educated. There are 1,000 school buildings made out of clay; Iraq needs 8,000 new schools. The rate of pupils missing out on education and leaving the sector early is now 73 per cent on average across all levels, including universities. The figures per level are 91 per cent in primary schools, 36 per cent in intermediary schools, 18 per cent in secondary schools and 14 per cent in universities.

In the health sector, the report reveals that 175 people were killed and 150 wounded in blazes at Ibn Al-Khatib Hospital in Baghdad and Al-Hussein Hospital in Nasiriyah. Both hospitals have been used for the isolation of Covid-19 patients.

In the housing sector, Iraq is in urgent need of 3.5 million housing units in order to overcome the ongoing crisis. There are 4,000 slums in which around half a million families live, mostly within Baghdad, which has 1,022 slums; the southern oil-rich province of Basra has 700 slums. It is worth noting that most of Iraq’s oil exports come out of this province and were estimated in November to have generated a revenue of $8 billion, according to the figures released by the State Organisation for Marketing of Oil.

READ: Experts urge Iraq government to curb poverty rates

In the transport sector, and due to the awful conditions of most highways and the lack of traffic control, the commission recorded 8,286 traffic accidents leading to the death of 2,152 citizens.

It is notable that the statistics and indicators provided by the Human Rights Commission came just days after its board members returned to work after parliament decided to suspend it “without legal reason”. It is now functioning again.

The law states that a new board for the commission should be elected by the Iraqi parliament, but the dissolution of the previous parliament prior to the legislative elections last October basically stopped its work. The Iraqi constitution tasks the commission with the monitoring of the human rights situation in the country.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Asharq Al-Awsat on 12 December 2021