Humanitarian organizations struggle to prepare for expected Mosul exodus
"It's not just a military campaign, which we're confident will go well,” The White House's special envoy to the coalition battling ISIS, Brett McGurk, said to reporters in Baghdad on Thursday. “It's also the humanitarian element to make sure that IDPs are taken care of and then the stabilization to make sure that the ground is laid to return the people to their homes."
Estimating a set number of IDPs or even if families who are expected to flee all at once in one wave or slowly over time is too difficult to predict by agencies such as UNHCR or UNICEF. However, at this point in time, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) anticipates up to 700,000 IDPs will come from Mosul.
Some families are already fleeing the Mosul district to be received in camps in Telkaif, Makhmur or Shirqat districts in Ninewa, Erbil and Salah al-Din Governorates. These IDPs are considered part of the 700,000 persons from only the Mosul area. Iraqis fleeing other ISIS-held territories, such as Kirkuk and Anbar, are not considered part of the expected wave of IDPs from Mosul.
Iraq forces have been clearing territory around Mosul for weeks in anticipation of the anticipated offensive. The Kurdish Peshmerga as well as US and coalition forces are expected to take part in the offensive, which has been in the planning for months.
How many IDPs will be received depends on a number of factors: the most prevalent is what kind of state Mosul is after the operation is finished. If the city is still conducive for its citizens to return to their homes, then the number of IDPs will be minimized.
“The estimated number of displaced people depends on the time and way the offensive is carried out,” Minister Darbaz Mohammed, Iraq’s Minister of Migration and Displacement said in an August 4 news conference.
Another factor affecting the number of IDPs is the degree that the outskirts of the city are affected by the operation. If the violence affects the surrounding villages, there is a greater likelihood there will be more people seeking refuge.
Currently, existing camps in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region are filled to capacity and the KRG claims it cannot allow more IDPs to enter for security reasons.
According to France Lau, UNHCR Senior Operations Manager for the Kurdistan Region, “Considering the sheer size of the expected influx, it is unrealistic to expect that all displaced families will be sheltered in camps.”
But the KRG has also listed economic reasons for why it cannot take in more IDPs. Since the Kurdistan region is within Iraq, the KRG cannot receive funds directly in order to help the IDPs. Therefore, fundraising has been difficult due to bureaucratic reasons.
In preparation for the expected wave from Mosul, the KRG has built three emergency camps, and two are underway in Erbil. But each can only accommodate approximately 1,000 families, which is miniscule in comparison to the expected number of IDPs coming after the Mosul operation.
Since 2014, the Kurdistan region has acted as a safe haven for many IDPs and refugees. According to Sharkr Yassin, head of the KRG office of Migration and Displacement, the IDPs and refugees who have fled to the Kurdistan Region have swelled the regional population by 24 percent.
However, approximately 85 percent of refugees and IDPs choose to live outside the camps now and are part of communities. Around Sulaimani and Erbil for example, 98 percent of IDPs and refugees live outside the camps.
Accommodating the refugees and IDPs has put a major burden on the KRG because all the aid organizations put their efforts focused only on the camps, not for refugees and IDPs living outside.
Over cooperation between the KRG and the Iraqi government on this issue, challenges have occurred such as agreements on funding. According to Yassin, Baghdad has not been as helpful as needed so the KRG primarily relies on aid agencies.
A report from The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) from August 9 states that “Military operations along the Mosul corridor started in March and have displaced over 80,000 people, around half of whom have fled to overcrowded camps in Debaga in Erbil Governorate.”
This is not the first time we have seen an influx of IDPs of this magnitude however. When ISIS first established itself in June of 2014, approximately 500,000 fled the Islamic State’s territory in hopes of seeking refuge in the Kurdish territories and throughout other parts of Iraq.
According to Jeffrey Bates, Chief of Strategic Communications and Partnerships for UNICEF in Iraq, what humanitarian organizations learned from June of 2014 was that no matter how much effort is made in preparation, what will actually transpire can never be predicted when receiving IDPs. Essentially, the organizations have accepted the understanding that they will never actually be properly prepared, regardless of the effort put in beforehand.
Unpredictability with the IDPs has led to UNICEF’s greatest challenge in dealing with the pending IDP wave: raising the appropriate amount of funding needed to accommodate all the IDPs expected to flee Mosul.
According to Bates, raising the amount of money needed has been incredibly difficult when you cannot tell donors exactly how many resources are needed or how they will be used.
In the meantime, to prepare as effectively as possible, UNHCR and humanitarian organizations alike are making lists of likely scenarios in order to have as many resources available as possible to meet the needs of the most vulnerable members of the inherited population.
These demographics include children, the sick, and the elderly. But as mentioned above, they cannot predict the actual number of IDPs; therefore, the number of those who are considered “vulnerable” cannot be anticipated either.
UNHCR is leading in providing logistics, education, food security, health, camp coordination and camp management, protection, shelter, water and sanitation, and “rapid response mechanism.”
UNHCR funding received so far, on top of the 2016 humanitarian relief plan (HRP) for Iraq ($ 861 million appealed) which is led by OCHA, a flash appeal of $284 million to fund emergency preparedness for Mosul was issued by OCHA on 20 July. Within this appeal, $145 million was earmarked, covering groups led by UNHCR (Protection – $25 million; Shelter & Non-food Items – $110 million; Camp Coordination and Management – $10 million).
Currently, "UNHCR assistance response for displaced Iraqis and Iraqi refugees in the region is funded at 37 percent of the total budget of $584 million, of which $215 million has been received so far. This includes the recent $75.9 million contribution from the United States," says Leila Nassif, UNHCR’s Deputy Representative in Iraq.