NGO supplies delivery to IDPs

D. Morrow

17 September 2014

outside Erbil

In an abandoned construction site on the outskirts of Erbil, down a track strewn with broken glass, rebar, and crumbled bricks, about 16 Yazidi families who escaped the ISIS attacks at Mt. Sinjar are living in a series of poorly constructed shelters. They fled from the horrors of Mt. Sinjar on foot, arriving in Erbil three weeks ago via Akre, meaning their journey took them significantly north and around through the mountains in order to avoid the fighting and air strikes near Mosul. I was accompanying local NGO Rise Foundation on their twice-a-week aid drops to families on the outskirts of the city. Each family receives one food box based off the World Food Program’s basic rationing, containing tuna, luncheon slices, beans, chickpeas, bulgur, bread, cooking oil, sugar, tea, salt, tomato paste, oat bars, pasta, rice, and water. This entire group of families only has two gas burners to cook with between them, so the boxes contain food that require minimum cooking times. They also receive a hygiene pack containing essential items including wet wipes, laundry powder, soap and disinfectant. These packs represent the only aid these families are currently receiving, and Rise Foundation finds itself stretching its resources as it does its best to provide emergency supplies for displaced people who are unregistered. 

As Rise unloaded the supplies, one of the Yazidi women came over and pulled an identity card out of her skirt to show me. It was a picture of a striking young woman, who didn’t appear to be any of the people nearby. Through gestures and naming towns in the area near Mt. Sinjar, we determined that the picture was the woman’s daughter, and she had either been killed or taken by ISIS. In the rubble behind her, some of the camp’s children listlessly watched the boxes be unloaded, at least a dozen under the age of ten barefoot, casually wandering through the metal and glass-strewn site that is their home. Rise Foundation (as well as other NGOs and major agencies such as UNHCR) is struggling to prepare families and groups of displaced people like these for winter, in the face of a situation that is so desperate they do not currently even have shoes.