Red Cross Federation seeks to help 300,000 Iraqis
Source: Reuters
By Laura MacInnis GENEVA, Feb 12 (Reuters) - The world's largest disaster relief agency appealed for money on Monday to help distribute clothes, blankets, tents and other emergency supplies to 300,000 Iraqis uprooted by war. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), based in Geneva, said it needed 10.3 million Swiss francs ($8.3 million) to deliver aid "in extraordinarily difficult circumstances" in Iraq over the coming year. Ahmed Gizo of the IFRC's Middle East and North Africa division said shortages of electricity and clean water had made bad conditions worse in a country mired in violence four years after U.S.-led forces invaded and deposed Saddam Hussein. With the nation increasingly split on sectarian lines, Gizo said the Iraqi Red Crescent, one of 185 national societies in the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, was vital for getting emergency supplies to vulnerable Iraqis across the country. "They are the only ones who can still do this," he added. VOLUNTEER NETWORK In December, gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped 30 people from a Red Crescent's office in Baghdad, later releasing 17. The remaining 13 have not yet been freed, said Dorothea Krimitsas, a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross. Despite being touched by the violence engulfing much of Baghdad, Krimitsas said, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society's (IRCS) large network of volunteers and staff around the country, and its neutrality in the field, made it best-placed to deliver aid. "Certainly today the (IRCS) is probably the only local organisation capable of responding to the most urgent needs of the Iraqi population countrywide," she said by telephone. "They are carrying out a humanitarian mission in an extremely difficult environment." In its appeal, the federation said emergency goods would go to Iraqi families with no income provider, no home or very little income due to violence that has displaced more than 630,000 people since February 2006, according to United Nations figures. Funds would also be used to train volunteers in first aid techniques and support national polio immunisation campaigns for 100,000 children aged five and under, the IFRC said. Last year, the IRCS and its partners delivered emergency supplies to 225,000 vulnerable people and monitored immunisation campaigns for 70,000 to 90,000 children. Referring to a World Food Programme report from May 2006, the IFRC said one in two Iraqis were living below the poverty line and more than 12 million people were dependent on food aid.
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