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As the winter approaches internally-displaced Iraqi families are in urgent need of proper shelter

Monday, 3 November 2014 17:40 GMT

Photo credit: EU/ECHO/Caroline Gluck

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* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In one neighbourhood of Kirkuk, northern Iraq, more than a hundred Iraqi families forced to leave their homes because of ongoing fighting live cheek-by-jowl in two unfinished, unheated buildings. There's no privacy, no running water, no proper sanitation facilities and only open windows and unfinished staircases - a certain hazard for the dozens of young children who run around.

Many families have just moved here and today are receiving emergency hygiene kits funded by the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), and distributed by aid agency Mercy Corps and its local partner - the United Foundation for Relief and Abiding Development (FUAD). The most vulnerable families will also soon receive cash to cover their basic needs, giving them the choice to decide their priority needs themselves.

Over 56 000 families are estimated to have taken refuge in Kirkuk governorate after witnessing and suffering through the fighting, shelling and destruction and death of relatives and friends in their home towns.  Most left with just the clothes on their back. And while some have managed to rent homes others have sought shelter in public buildings such as mosques, half-finished buildings  and schools, which have been forced to delay re-opening for the new term because they are housing families.

"If you compare our lives before and now it's like the ground and the sky," said 43 year-old Adnan Abdul Aziz Saleh, a father of eight, who worked as a taxi driver in Tikrit.  He lives in one room in an unfinished building with his family and mother, where they both cook and sleep. They've placed plastic sheeting around one window in an effort to keep out some of the cold. "You can see we need health care, food, shelter...everything," said Abdul.

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