The people of Mosul must be able to trust the security forces assigned to protect them and they must have the option to stay in their homes or move to a secured zone at their discretion. “It means who are the security forces who interact with the civilians,” said Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), speaking to reporters. “They have to have the trust of the civilians.”
Establishing this trust “means that people who prefer to stay in their homes should be allowed to do so and people who want to go out of their homes because they don’t feel safe should also be allowed to do so,” he continued. “It means that people who have decided to flee, to go out, should not be forced to go back if they are afraid to go back.”
“It means there should be no revenge, retaliation or retribution against civilians including during the very important security screening” and people who do flee must be located somewhere safe, out of reach of military activity.
Filippo Grandi made his comments to reporters on Tuesday after holding meetings over the past couple of days with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad, and Kurdish President Masoud Barzani and Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani in Erbil.
All three leaders gave the high commissioner “strong assurances in terms of protection of civilians,” he said, adding that “The protection of the civilians in Mosul cannot be just the responsibility of a few humanitarian organizations.”
During his trip, he visited camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Debaga.
He noted that the UN is supporting the governments of Baghdad and Erbil to care for 3.3 million who were displaced even before the Mosul offensive started, and since the launch of the military operation on Monday, they have already witnessed people fleeing from the outskirts of the city.
Grandi's visit had three main objectives. The first is to ensure the protection of the civilians in Mosul during military operations, largely through ensuring the civilian population can trust their liberators.
The second objective was to ensure that the logistics on the ground were prepared for the incoming wave of IDPs.
“We hope that not many people will leave Mosul but we have to plan for large numbers,” Grandi explained. “The United Nations, the government have sufficient materials, especially shelter materials like tents for example, for hundreds of thousands of people, maybe up to 400,000.”
Grandi stressed that the humanitarian organizations involved “must be very flexible in the response that we provide in this situation.”
The third objective of his visit was to evaluate the amount of resources on the ground and the amount still required. “We need more resources to organize a better response especially in the longer term especially if the situation continues during winter which could have a whole set of new needs,” Grandi said.
The UN needs “$120 million to respond to the Mosul emergency” and other organizations need more resources as well. He stressed that “the situation may become very urgent in the next few days and weeks.”
Assistance provided during these crucial times must go beyond accommodating the IDPs but “also for the community that is surrounding them and for the government of Kurdistan that is bearing a considerable burden,” said Grandi. “So the appeal to donors is not just for the displaced people but to support the structures and the communities, the social life that are affected by the presence of these people.”
“I hope that the Mosul crisis will allow Kurdistan and Iraq as a whole to turn the page and really start an earnest rebuilding of a prosperous and stable country,” he concluded.
