XUNICEF News and Views

I was strolling through the lovely streets of Amsterdam when I saw this poster for a movie involving Saddam Hussein: The President's Cake. Having worked and met my life partner in Iraq, I was immediately intrigued.

Ruins at Hatra, Iraq Recently, I remembered some ‘events’ at check points that we had to pass; a) To get from Amman to Baghdad and b) from Baghdad to Erbil and, of course, in the reverse direction, too Typically, to exit Erbil back to the real world (at that time), took the best part of a week – to get all the permits and so on. It meant that when my mother died in the UK, and I was in Erbil, I was unable to return to attend her funeral, which was sad for me but as all my four brothers were there, the family was well represented. With the distances that we were required to travel, it would have been easier and quicker had we been able to fly everywhere. However, the No-Fly-Zone put paid to air travel for most of the time. Only once during my time in Iraq, did I fly from Baghdad to Amman. It was on the day following the death of Princess Diana in Paris.   Given the situation, since the Check Points were manned by the Iraqis themselves, when UN staff came through, we were not...

(Saddam Hussein's abandoned palace on Gara mountain in Northern Iraq  source ) What was the most impactful project you ever worked on at UNICEF? Mine is easy to recall. It was a WASH project that diverted water from one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces back to the villagers from whom it had been stolen.

Earlier this week, our "Photo Memory of the Week" featured a group photo shared by Niloufar Pourzand, capturing members of the joint UNICEF–WHO emergency mission to Iraq.

Today, 19 August 2024, marks the 21st anniversary of the bombing of the UN HQ in Baghdad when we lost 23 of our friends and colleagues with over 160 injured. Every year, this anniversary brings back vivid and precious memories of the people and places I met during my two-year assignment in Iraq.* It was September 1997. The UN plane landed on a bumpy pot-holed runway and stumbled over to what was left of the Habbaniya military airport located 20 km outside Baghdad. Through the murky windows, we could see abandoned buildings and destroyed military planes. Iraq was under heavy sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. These sanctions forbade Iraq to fly its own planes. Ours was the last UN flight as Saddam Hussein decided to retaliate and forbid the UN to fly in Iraqi air space - thus forcing UN staff to endure 12 hours on the monotonous highway linking Baghdad to Amman and the outside world. Untitled (painting collage) by Ismael Fattah, 1934...

  He was displaced to Al-Hol camp for seven years and was not accepted by the community and neighbors. Thanks to a UNICEF-supported training course, he’s now reintegrated in his community.

From Middle East Monitor article Click here for the article on the Guardian See also  Earlier article we posted on 22 January UN staff in Iraq demand ... Middle East Monitor Summary: The article reports on allegations of corruption within the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) $1.5 billion reconstruction program in Iraq. A Guardian investigation found that UNDP staff were allegedly taking bribes in exchange for helping contractors win lucrative deals.

It’s one of those memories you never lose, seared deep in the soul. It came back with full force when I opened the news feed this morning, and read that this Saturday, 19 August, will mark 20 years since that truck bomb went off at the UN’s headquarters in Baghdad in the Canal Hotel. The bombing came during my time as RD in MENA.  I was not in Baghdad that day.  I was home in Amman, when Naheed Aziz, the Deputy RD phoned to give me the first news.  We didn't know much beyond that a bomb had gone off.  Only later did we learn that 22 people had died that day, 20 of them UN staff. Another 150 were wounded. Among the dead was Sergio de Mello, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Special Envoy for Iraq.   More important for us in UNICEF was that the dead included Chris Klein-Beekman, SPO and OIC at that moment in UNICEF Iraq. The bomb went off at around 4:45 PM, just after the official working hours and so at a time when many local staff were heading h...

17 August 2023  20  Peace and Security The widow of a UN staff member who died in the terrorist attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq has been describing how “a piece of me also died on that tragic day.” Laura Dolci’s husband, Jean-Selim Kanaan, had been deployed by the UN Office for Project Services to work as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq. Twenty years after the attack and to mark World Humanitarian Day which is commemorated annually on 19 August, she remembers her husband. “In the terrorist attack against the UN headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003, I lost Jean-Selim Kanaan, my 33-year-old husband and father of our newly born son. We had met in Bosnia, and then moved together to Kosovo and later to New York, fiercely in love and sharing the same values and love for the blue flag. With him and our colleagues, a piece of me also died on that tragic day. © Laura Dolci Laura Dolci and her late husband, Jean-Selim K...

Paloma posted links to this El Pais Weekly article on Twitter. The article includes 11 photographs by Diego Ibarra Sánchez - haunting images of a childhood lost due to war. Original in Spanish English translation A 30 kilómetros de la frontera entre Irak e Irán, Zainab recolectaba la delicada trufa del desierto. La acompañaban su madre y su hermano. De pronto, un explosivo detonó bajo sus pies. Zainab sobrevivió, pero perdió la vista y también a su madre https://t.co/2Mxj172gj1 — EL PAÍS SEMANAL (@elpaissemanal) July 9, 2022

The two articles below are difficult for me to absorb even though I know that “indiscriminate weapons” continue to injure and kill children in many of today’s conflicts. These include anti-personnel landmines, improvised explosive devices and unexploded cluster munitions (these wicked bomblets are being used by Russia in Ukraine, at least in Kharkiv, according to Human Rights Watch).  Since the 1990s, UNICEF has worked with other UN agencies and NGOs to prevent child injury and death by providing technical guidance and programming on risk education. UNICEF also provides assistance to child survivors of mine incidents, through provision of artificial limbs, mental and emotional support, and access to education. Children are particularly prone to picking up these terrible weapons, thinking they are toys or for the re-sale value of the metal. The term “EWIPA” is perhaps not familiar to most of us, but it is also part of what UNICEF does: Calling upon governments to avoid the use of “...