UN relief coordinator: 500,000 expected to flee towards Erbil from Mosul

UNITED NATIONS, New York - In an exclusive interview with Rudaw, Stephen O'Brien, the UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator (USG/ERC), speaks about the humanitarian crisis that is expected from the anticipated military operation to liberate the city of Mosul in northern Iraq from the clutches of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) group. O’Brien, who oversees all emergencies requiring United Nations humanitarian assistance, says that despite the huge number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) that are expected to be affected by the military operations, the UN is well placed to provide basic needs to the most needy.  Here is Rudaw’s full interview with O’Brien: 

To what extent are humanitarian conditions critical in Iraq?

Well it’s very severe and it is unfortunately deteriorating and we are having to plan for the very sharp increase in humanitarian needs as the expectation of the recovery of Mosul is in train. So put that together, we have something in the order of 10-12 million people at risk and we have some millions in various parts who have humanitarian needs tonight and we can see that we are able to reach many of them but by no means all of them. And some of the access routes are blocked by violence, some because they are in areas that are currently controlled by so-called ISIL and others because we have yet to be able to secure the supply chains and to get the funding to be able to ensure that we have sufficient to meet all the needs of all the people who need food, water, shelter, emergency medical assistance and the ability to be able to move of their own free will, should they wish to.

  Some of the access routes are blocked by violence, some because they are in areas that are currently controlled by so-called ISIL.  

To make preparations for a huge flow of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) fleeing Mosul, the UN demand $275 million. This is apart from another $761 million that the UN needs to assist more than the 3 million IDPs who exist now in Iraq. Countries providing funds to the UN have been able to meet only 47 percent of this sum. What are your plans?

Well, one of the things which is being really noticeable in the whole of this very long protracted crisis -- and let’s not forget it’s a man-made crisis; all the humanitarian needs that come out of conflict are man-made. So the primary and the best humanitarian response is for the guns to fall silent, for there to be no conflict. But we have to plan for where that does not take place. And one of the things which has been very clear, whether it has to do with funding or the access issues, has been that in the past in Iraq, looking at the totality of Iraq, people with humanitarian needs have been broadly served by the governance of Iraq by the Kurdistan Regional Government authorities, by the areas that have been able to secure a lot of NGO support. And the UN, through this agency and the office of coordination which I head up, have been able to support what has been that delivery mechanism for people in need. It has also been very responsive because, of course, as you can imagine the needs move in terms of what’s happening in terms of front lines -- who is with the upper hand or not -- and we saw that when there was a change in control in Fallujah, where there was scattering to the four corners and then we had to be picking up the pieces, ensuring access routes, shelter, as well as medical, food, water. And what has changed is now the UN and its agencies and its humanitarian partners. These are being regarded as its primary deliverers, partly because we’ve got severe economic challenges in all parts of Iraq and because there has been this continuing anxiety about the ability to deliver. So this is what’s changed and it’s putting enormous pressure on the donors when they try to access how they can best help. Of course their generosity can’t be called into question. It’s an enormously generous thing. We recently had another fundraising in America, in Washington, to try to raise money and that’s been well-funded. But the question is translating those pledges into the actual programs for humanitarian support as well as stabilization and the other things.

In your opinion, what should the governments in Erbil and Baghdad do financially to prepare themselves for the battle for Mosul?

  This is potentially near a half-million people fleeing towards the Erbil direction, so this will be primarily a big concern for everybody,   

Well, I think we have to be really clear that when the operation -- and we can see some of the peripheral area now already being engaged in a recovery program as it’s being described -- when it gets to the main culmination, we have some indication and as humanitarians we have to prepare for when the consequences of what’s going to take place will produce needs of food and water and shelter, but also protection. And I can see very clearly that you are going to get very large numbers of people on the move. We would expect something in the region of over 70,000 families. This is potentially near a half-million people fleeing towards the Erbil direction, so this will be primarily a big concern for everybody in the Erbil area stepping up to the fraternal responsibilities to give people who are fleeing for safety, and that will be very important. But at the same time, perhaps going westwards, you’ll have some of the ISIL fighters fleeing and so you will have another scattering. But we also know that there will probably be a retention of possibly as many as 200,000 people or so in the center of Mosul, which will be very difficult for those who are trying to ensure operations to not put people at even further risk than they’re already suffering. And the uncertainty and fear, of course, will have a major effect upon the humanitarian -- not just of course because of food and shelter and all the things you would expect -- but because of protection. This is to do with women and girls who have been appallingly subjected to gender sexual-based violence, by women who have been very seriously abused generally and into a modern type of slavery. You’ve also got men and boys who have been, against their will, recruited or abducted to try and be persuaded to join fights without of their volition and indeed who have been subjected also to appalling sexual violence as well, which is often not spoken about. So I think we are dealing with people who will be deeply traumatized, and whether the services will go beyond purely protection and the commodities of life and but also there will need to be a very specialized psychosocial support for many people. So I do see this as something we have to prepare for and prepare for both urgently well.

To what extent has the UN launched preparations for the fallout from the Mosul offensive, and to what extent are you ready to receive this huge number of IDPs that is expected to flee Mosul?

We are very well planned and we have got very good people on the ground today. They’re working well and closely with all the authorities across all the relevant parts of Iraq and we are as well planned as we can be for something that we cannot be sure how it is going to take place, when it is going to take place and precisely where it will take place. So humanitarian needs very much rise out of the actions of particular violence and the fighting and of course you have innocent civilians and many others who are caught up in this who need the assistance and support. So yes, we are very well prepared. In terms of the money, you mentioned, 47-48 percent funded is what the current humanitarian response plan managed to attract around the world -- all the various humanitarian plans that we have calling upon the generosity of the international community to support us in humanitarian action. That is not a bad statistic but that’s still below half of what we believe already we have assessed that we need. And yet we can see with the potential for the fight and battle for Mosul, we can see that that’s going to have to be revised upwards, whichever way you look at it, so that will mean that less of a proportion is actually funded. Now the international community is coming together, is talking about this a lot, it is well prepared, it is thinking about the resources necessary to support the programs. The design of the program, the coordination, the marshaling of the UN agencies in terms of the relevant work they can offer to make sure that we meet people’s needs. The protection and the way we make sure that the routes -- safe routes for flight, those who wish voluntary to take off and to flee -- to make sure that we are doing our best to give people protection if they decide to stay put and to meet the immediate needs of people. So we have various phases of planning to try and then match whatever phases of the actions on the ground, the facts on the ground as they develop or emerge and that really is what we can do. We’ve got very strong leadership in terms of the UN in Iraq, particularly the humanitarian coordinator is extraordinarily experienced and very active in producing the relevant information well ahead of time. It’s very rare that we have this sense of predictability of scenarios of what we have to face and I take my hat off to her ability to marshal the world’s thinking of what is coming straight down the track at us.

  We are very well planned and we have got very good people on the ground today.  

You talked about last month’s Washington conference, where the US and its allies pledged to give over $2 billion dollars to Iraq. The mechanism to distribute this fund is not clear. The US State Department says the UN is responsible for how to distribute this huge amount of money. Could you please explain how this $ 2.2 billion is going to be distributed and how much of it will be spent on Mosul military operations?

Well, the money that was raised was very much to support the Iraqi people, to meet the needs that they have, particularly as the areas of conflict go through -- and then are left -- either having fled or their homes are needing repair or where they don’t have access to the basic commodities of life or emergency medical treatment. So I am anticipating that a good proportion of that money will be focused on stabilization, seeking to help secure what has become a new settlement once the recovery of areas which are previously controlled by the so-called ISIL movement has happened. Now that means the $2 billion or so maybe about half a billion will be most specifically allocated towards humanitarian immediate needs and the rest will be perhaps a little bit more invested in the early recovery, development and stabilization that you would expect in order to try and underpin not only people’s survival but their ability to survive in a sustainable way so that would also have to underpin livelihoods. Of course, it takes time for that money to go from being pledged to converted to cash then buying programs and I think it’s fair to say -- although we have as I mentioned before made huge preparations. In normal time, it would take about two and a half months to knowing we’ve got the money to actually being able to implement it directly on the ground to the people in need. Now, of course we can shorten that very speedily if we need to, depending on the facts. But it puts up the cost and so you’ll reach, over time (cost) is obviously affected because the unit cost in reaching people in need goes up if you have to very rapidly accelerate it while having a much more planned distribution and of course it really matters that you have access so that you can be sure that when you are delivering these very vital commodities that you are genially meeting the needs of people in need. Need is our only measure. We’re not partial. We’re always impartial, always neutral, always independent and it’s very important that we don’t get sucked into any side of a fight or indeed supplying these commodities (to people) who actually don’t have those vital humanitarian needs.

You spoke about the UN’s neutrality on spending international funding.  Apart from this, half a billion dollars are going to be given to the IDPs. The other $2 billion should be spent on the IDPs that are going back to their homes. Is this sum going to be given to the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad, or is the UN itself going to carry out its projects?

 The decision as to how the money gets allocated is being delegated to the UN from those who have been generous enough to come together and raise the money.  

That’s being discussed at the moment. But in essence, the decision as to how the money gets allocated is being delegated to the UN from those who have been generous enough to come together and raise the money because they see that as being the best way to ensure the impartiality. In particular, when you are dealing with a country that is in immediate --or parts of a country which are in immediate – post-conflict, you have to be extraordinarily careful because there are people who remember all too vividly the terrible suffering, the terrible fight that they have been in and many people were not engaged in one side or the other, but there were many combatants and ex-combatants who were and it takes time for a healing process to take place and we don’t want the money that has been raised for humanitarian needs or for early recovery or for stabilization to get people back on their feet and to return to their homes to make sure that they have some shelter or shoes on their children’s feet or emergency medical care. You don’t want that to be allocated in such a way that would make it appear as though one side had either won or the other lost or was particularly favored one against the other because the only issue for us is meeting needs. We have to make an assessment: who has the needs? However it arose, wherever it arose, whenever it arose; that doesn’t matter. It only matters that the needs are being met. And that’s why we look at Iraq as clearly rightly a whole country. It is a member state and the UN of course is characterized as being a member state organization. So that is the starting point for us to ensure our neutrality and to keep our focus on doing what we have to do, which is to meet the humanitarian needs rather than to find ourselves drawn to one side of any kind of partial dispute or another.

We hear criticism from Kurdish officials saying they have hosted hundreds of thousands of IDPs and refugees in this small-sized region. But Kurdish representative are never invited to high-level meetings held by the UN about Iraq’s humanitarian and political situations. Even in the humanitarian summit held in Istanbul, Kurds were not invited. What is your answer to these criticisms, why do Kurds feel like they are marginalized?

Well, I’m very conscious that wherever people generously offer shelter and refuge to people who are fleeing or in need, it doesn’t matter who they are or to where they owe their allegiance. We should celebrate and salute them for their selfless protection, particularly their generous approach to making sure people are looked after in their time of need. It’s exactly what you would hope and expect to happen to you, should it happen. That is not a distinction. What is a distinction is the United Nations is made of member states. That’s how it is constituted, the values that were set up immediately following the Second World War were stated in a charter which has very much stood the test of time for 70 years now. But it is very much based upon member states. Of course, it’s challenged whenever people want to think about borders afresh, for instance, or whatever, but that is something the United Nations can neither lead or demonstrate any partiality, particularly if you are the humanitarian arm of the United Nations. We have very, very clear principles we have to operate by.  In international humanitarian law, both the traditional law that has been guardianed in Geneva since the 1860s but also as enshrined by the United Nations Charter values and particularly the resolution in the early 90s, the source of what sets up the big humanitarian activity of the United Nations is a thing in which we are all engaged with and the rest of the world feels is a very important part of what we expect to see the United Nations do in terms of coordination and marshaling resources and delivery, and you know the big agencies that do that and working with humanitarian partners, all that is done with in the name and in the request of the member states, all 193 of them who come together and pass resolutions and indeed vote and raise the regular money. But as it happens, the humanitarians have to go out and raise each year and its part of my job to marshal resources in what is called extra budgetary. So the answer to your question is not because it is either a choice or a partial thing, it is to demonstrate our impartiality that our engagement is part of the way we are organized as the United Nations and the member states but we have a particular responsibility as the humanitarians to operate in accordance with international humanitarian law and to make sure we are always impartial, neutral, independent and acting in the name of humanity. Our only test is to find, have access and meet the needs of people who either need food, water, shelter, emergency medical treatment both in situations or evacuated and to make sure we do everything we can to provide the protection for people who are vulnerable in their time of need and particularly for those in man-made conflicts these humanitarian issues are rising which also gives rise to gender-based sexual violence.

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