Women, kids, old, sick most at risk in Iraq--IOM
Source: Reuters
GENEVA, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Single women, children and the old and sick in Iraq are most at risk of being left hungry and homeless among people uprooted by the sectarian violence, an international aid group warned on Tuesday. In a report, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that children were especially vulnerable to malnutrition and spread of disease. In the volatile province of Salahaddin, whose capital is former President Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, most displaced female heads of households, single pregnant women, the elderly and the sick "struggle for survival without proper access to shelter, food, water and medical assistance", it said. "... traditional coping mechanisms are not only being stretched to the limit but are starting to break down," said Rafiq Tschannen, IOM's chief of mission for Iraq. Even in the "comparatively stable" Qadissiya province, some 200 kms south of Baghdad, some 11 percent of the displaced are widows left alone to fend for themselves and their children, according to the report by the Geneva-based agency. According to the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), some 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing their homes each month because of the violence adding to the more than 1.5 million already homeless within Iraq.
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