With Japanese money UN rebuilds Ramadi homes for returning families

BAGHDAD, Iraq—As authorities in Iraq’s western Anbar province encourage internally displaced people to return home months after the expulsion of ISIS, the United Nations has joined in to make the returnees’ settlement possible by rebuilding homes destroyed in the war.

The UN Habitat has rebuilt and handed over to their owners 123 homes in Ramadi’s Tameem neighborhood.

The project was funded by the Japanese government under Promoting Urban Recovery in Newly Liberated Areas in Iraq.

The UN said in a statement on the completion of the project that it was “to ensure that they live in dignity, and in safe and secured accommodation.”

Ramadi was liberated last December and since then local authorities, chief among them governor Suhaib al-Rawi, have been calling on those who fled the fighting to return and bring life back to the province.

“Housing rehabilitation is critical to enable the return of the displaced citizens to Ramadi and in other cities,” al-Rawi said, as quoted by the UN.

Following its liberation by Iraqi Special Forces Anbar authorities claimed that 80 percent of Ramadi city had been destroyed in the fight against ISIS while the risk of explosives and unexploded ordnance was too great to allow many families to return.

Head of UN-Habitat in Iraq Erfan Ali says that his “agency had accomplished the rehabilitation of the female students apartments in the University of Anbar in Ramadi,” and they have plans to rebuild 104 homes in the next phase.

“UN-Habitat’s intervention is community-based as the local community committees had played substantial role in coordinating and facilitating the technical assessment and the participation of more than 96 persons from the neighbourhood in the rehabilitation works in the first phase,” Ali is quoted by the UN.