HPG Policy Brief 30: Humanitarian Action in Iraq: Putting the pieces together

Five years on from the invasion of Iraq by Coalition forces and the situation for civilians in the country is dire. Humanitarian personnel attempting to provide relief and protection have faced huge challenges and risks due to insecurity, restricted access and logistical difficulties. This has led to a fragmented response.

This latest Policy Brief explores the key constraints to principled humanitarian action in Iraq, and questions whether the international community is ready to address these issues as it prepares to scale up humanitarian action in 2008.

The Policy Brief is available to download from the HPG website.

Drawing on interviews with a range of individuals and organisations currently working in Iraq, its key messages are as follows:

• International humanitarian action in Iraq since 2003 has been inadequate to the nature and scale of the task. It has been piecemeal and largely conducted undercover, hindered by insecurity, a lack of coordinated funding, limited operational capacity and patchy information.

• As humanitarian agencies look to scale up interventions in 2008, most of the earlier challenges to providing assistance in Iraq - political, institutional and operational - continue to exist.

• More concerted action is possible in Iraq, but there is a problematic lack of consensus on needs and on the scope for safe access. Needs in Iraq vary widely between different area and the absence of information systems that are up-to-date and accurate has hampered humanitarian action.

• Humanitarian action is neither a tool of nor a substitute for political action so the humanitarian community needs to draw clearer lines between its role and that of political and military actors. Blurring these distinctions compromises access to relief and the safety of local and international aid workers.

• There is an urgent need to establish a common humanitarian agenda in Iraq and to re-assert a clear humanitarian identity. This demands that agencies establish the means to agree a shared assessment of needs and analysis. It also requires a re-affirmation of humanitarian principles as a basis of a new compact with civil society and Iraqi communities.