Overview
The Republic of Iraq is believed to be the world’s most heavily contaminated country, with extensive and complex explosive hazard (EH) contamination stemming from a multitude of conflicts over the past decades, including the most recent EH contamination resulting from the conflict with the so called Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). The type and the extent of the EH contamination in Iraq is unprecedentedly vast and multi-layered, including conventional explosive remnants of war (ERWs) such as anti-personnel mines (AP), anti-vehicle mines (AV), cluster munitions and other conventional ordnance, as well as most recently witnessed improvised explosive devices (IEDs). That, combined with the evolving nature of contamination from traditional minefields, battle area and cluster contamination to more urban and residential EH contamination, makes Iraq a pioneer for the sector of mine action and housing, land and property rights(HLP) with various the complexities of the nascent humanitarian operational environment.
An unstable security situation; fear and trauma; lack of social cohesion; issues related to documentation; lack of livelihoods; destroyed or damaged housing, as well as perceived fear of EH contamination all contribute to protracted displacements of internally displaced persons (IDPs), as well as secondary and new displacement of populations in need. Negative coping mechanisms that the persons in humanitarian need resort to, such as secondary occupation of properties, engaging in removal of EH by civilians, or paying third party groups to do so, among others, contribute to an unsafe, unsustainable, involuntary and undignified return process of IDPs to their areas of origin. According to the 2019 Iraq Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO), the issue of protracted displacement will extend well into 2019 with predictions of it rolling over to 2020 and the coming years.
The most recent conflict in Iraq has pushed millions of people to flee their homes, causing 6.7 million to be in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, still in 2019. There are approximately 2 million IDPs living in camps and informal non-camp settlements, who are unable to return to their homes.