News
Returning to ruins, displaced Iraqi farmers find help to rebuild
“When we left, the oranges on the trees were this big,” says Matra, cradling the memory of the fruit in two weather-beaten hands as she describes the night they fled their farm. “When we returned, the trees were all burned and nothing was left.”
Matra, 60, escaped along with her family and most of the other villagers of Yathrib – a farming community some 50 kilometres north of Baghdad – when ISIS fighters swept through the area in mid-2014.
“It was a tough night,” she says. “They were firing rockets at us. We managed to flee, but it was a painful night.”
After being displaced for two years, she was finally able to return to the farm in 2016, but was met with a scene of devastation. “Everything was different,” Matra said. “I came back and the farm was burned and everything was gone, including our clothes.”
“Farming is my life.”
Where once they had produced enough oranges, pomegranates, grapes and other products to support a simple yet comfortable lifestyle, the damage done to their home and farmland by the retreating militants meant they were no longer able produce enough to sell.
“Farming is my life, we can’t survive without it. We harvest and sell. But now I just plant to eat,” Matra explains. The small apartment she shared with her husband attached to the main farmhouse had been gutted by fire, forcing them to sleep in a shared room with half a dozen other family members.
Matra (bottom right) sits for a family portrait with her husband (left), and other family members. © UNHCR/Houssam Hariri
It was a similar story for her neighbour Kutaiba, 22, whose family owns a 4,000 square metre plot of vines and apple and pomegranate trees. After being displaced for two years to the nearby city of Samarra, relying on his father’s teaching salary to get by, they came back to find the farm he had lived on all his life destroyed.
“When I returned, it was heart-breaking,” Kutaiba said. “The farm was ruined and the house was burned down.” They set about the labourious and costly work of rebuilding, starting with the farm that provides their livelihood before moving on to the house, repairing one room at a time.
“For us, the farm is everything,” Kutaiba explains. “Replanting takes time. This is the first year [since 2016] that we have had a harvest. Life was better before. We have lost a lot – money, homes, cars, cows – life is more expensive now, and more difficult.”
Of the estimated 12,000 residents from Yathrib that were displaced in 2014, some 8,500 have so far returned to the area. In the country as a whole, of nearly 6 million people internally displaced by the conflict since 2014, some 4.3 million have returned to their homes while around 1.6 million remain currently displaced.
Across Iraq, UNHCR – the UN Refugee Agency – is working to provide assistance both to displaced people and those returning home. In Yathrib, it has funded a number of priority projects including installing new electricity transformers, rehabilitating water treatment plants and repairing road bridges and the area’s main irrigation canal.
“The repairs were a big help.”
“Water is vital to our lives. Without it, all the [replanted] trees would have died,” Kutaiba says. “The irrigation was destroyed during the war, so the repairs were a big help in getting us back in business.”
UNHCR is also helping individuals such a Matra with repairs to their damaged homes, replacing windows and doors and plastering and painting damaged walls. The scale of the rebuilding task is huge, as evidenced by the rows of crumpled houses that were destroyed by the militants as they left. But for the returning residents, there is at least a glimmer of hope.
“This is my land, and the land of my ancestors. Of course I am very attached to it,” Kutaiba explains. “We were one of the first families to return, because we wanted to live with dignity on our own land, even though everything was destroyed. I can’t describe the feeling when we came back, [and now] I look forward to a better future.”
Source: UNHCR
News
Biden reverses Trump’s travel ban on Nigeria, Yemen, Eritrea, others
Mr Biden has now nullified the entry ban on citizens from over a dozen countries, including Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, and Sudan.
Newly sworn-in American president, Joe Biden, on Wednesday, issued an executive order nullifying a travel ban imposed on citizens of some Muslim-majority countries by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Before his exit from White House on Wednesday, Mr Trump-led administration was notorious for its harsh policies against immigrants and asylum seekers, one of his many election campaign promises.
He tightened the policies amidst the coronavirus pandemic which rocked the globe, claiming his decision was to protect American populace.
However, Mr Biden, immediately after his inauguration on Wednesday, issued a number of executive orders undoing some of the policies and projects of his predecessor.
Reversals
Mr Biden has now nullified the entry ban on citizens from over a dozen countries, including Nigeria, Eritrea, Yemen, and Sudan.
“There’s no time to waste.
“These are just all starting points,” he said before signing the 17 executive orders in the White House, a statement that connotes the possibility of many more to come.
Mr Trump’s strict immigration policies have been condemned by leaders and civil groups in the past.
The American Civil Liberties Union, on Wednesday lauded Mr Biden’s decision berating his predecessor’s travel policy a “cruel Muslim ban that targeted Africans.
Culled from Premium Times
News
Frightened residents brace as Cyclone Eloise approaches Mozambique
IOM is assisting the Government of Mozambique’s preparations for the arrival of Cyclone Eloise, moving people to safety in accommodation centers in Buzi. Photo: IOM 2021
Roughly 160 International Organization for Migration (IOM) staff in central Mozambique are working to prepare local communities for the imminent arrival of Cyclone Eloise, which is currently packing winds of at least 150 km/h.
“The people are scared,” said Cesaltino Vilanculo, an IOM Mobile team leader in the provincial capital Beira, who helped hundreds of families evacuate from unsafe temporary settlements to two accommodation centers.
“The water is rising in their zones and people are frightened, bracing for yet another storm.”
Eloise is expected to make landfall in Beira late Friday or early Saturday. By mid-afternoon today shops across the city are closed and flooded streets, empty.
IOM personnel will be ready to respond immediately with specialists in camp coordination and management, shelter, the distribution of non-food items, health and protection services and data mapping under IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM).
The Port of Beira is set to close on Friday for a period of about 40 hours in expectation of dangerous winds and rain from the afternoon of 22 January through the morning of 24 January. Beira is the main entry point for goods bound for north coastal Mozambique.
A limited supply of emergency non-food items had been stockpiled in Beira, including tarps and water tanks. However, resources are stretched, as IOM is actively responding to the crisis across Northern Mozambique.
At the same time, over 900 people are already displaced in Beira City due to recent heavy rains and the impact of Tropical Storm Chalane, which hit nearby Sofala Province on 30 December.
“The government is working, identifying the safe places to bring the people who are most vulnerable,” explained Aida Temba, a protection project assistant with IOM Mozambique.
“The rain is coming, and the water is rising and it’s not easy to reach all the people who need assistance. But we do our best to respond.”
Hundreds of families were evacuated to two accommodation centres, sheltered in tents provided by Mozambique’s National Institute for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction (INGD). One accommodation center was today closed, in favor of moving families to schools, which provide more stable structure. Those families’ needs include food, potable water, hygiene kits and soap.
IOM Mozambique also has reported that due to heavy rainfall and the discharge of water from the Chicamba dam and the Mavuzi reservoir—both in the Buzi District west of Beira—over 19,000 people have been affected and hundreds are being moved to accommodation centers. Their needs include food, hygiene kits, and COVID-19 prevention materials.
IOM staff are supporting the Government of Mozambique with the movements in both Beira and Buzi and actively working to improve drainage ways in resettlement sites in preparation for further rains.
IOM’s DTM, working jointly with Mozambique’s INGD, is poised to produce a report on displacement and damages within the first 72 hours of the cyclone’s arrival.
Tropical storms historically are common in these early months of rainy season. Cyclone Idai struck the country in March 2019. It is considered one of the worst tropical cyclones to hit Africa on record, claiming hundreds of lives, and affecting three million people across wide swaths of Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi and Zimbabwe. A second powerful storm, Cyclone Kenneth, hit Mozambique just weeks later.
Total property damages from Cyclone Idai have been estimated at some USD2.2 billion. Almost two years later, roughly 100,000 people remain in resettlement sites, which also have been battered by the recent rains.
News
IOM commends United States’ inclusion of migrants in COVID-19 vaccine roll-out
-
News11 months ago
Again, Nigeria denies deportation of nationals from Germany
-
Opinions1 year agoInternational Migrants Day – Opinion Editorial
-
News1 year agoInternational Migrants Day: JIFORM pushes for review of policy to benefit all
-
Investigation12 months agoUNCOVERED: How NGOs, not FG facilitated release of ladies held captive in Lebanon
-
News6 months agoLead review of anti-human trafficking strategies in Nigeria- JIFORM tells NAPTIP
-
News1 year agoClimate refugees can’t be returned home, says landmark UN human rights ruling
-
Investigation1 year ago‘No Olvidado’: These Americans find and bury missing migrants
-
News8 months ago30 migrants killed in Libya