UNITED NATIONS :  Amidst ongoing insecurity in the northern part of the country, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Monday welcomed progress toward forming a new government in Iraq and encouraged prime minister-designate Haider al-Abbadi to form a broad-based government acceptable to all parts of society. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that the secretary-general urged all political parties to remain calm and respect the constitutional process.
Dujarric said the secretary-general is concerned that heightened political tensions and the threat from the Islamic State militant group, which now controls a large swath of Iraq’s west and north, “could lead the country into even deeper crisis.”
“The people of Iraq deserve to live in a safe, prosperous and stable country - one that all groups in Iraq, including religious and ethnic minorities, can meaningfully contribute to and feel as their own,” Dujarric said.
Meanwhile, the top United Nations official in Iraq Monday expressed support for President Fouad Masoum’s office and urged security forces to exercise restraint at this “dangerous time” as politicians are working towards creating a new Government.
Masoum “is undertaking his duties in line with the Constitution and the democratic political process,” Special Representative of the Secretary-General Nickolay Mladenov said in a statement. He also addressed Iraqi security forces, telling them that they “should refrain from actions that may be seen as interference in matters related to the democratic transfer of political authority.”
Masoum was elected as the new President on 24 July. In accordance with the Iraqi Constitution, he had until this past weekend to nominate a Prime Minister who would then form a new Government.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday called on all Iraqi political parties to work towards the formation of a new Government that would be able to confront the threat from the armed group, the Islamic State (IS).
Attacks by IS have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The situation is particularly dire on Jebel Sinjar, or Sinjar Mountain, where an estimated 50,000 people are believed to be trapped since ISIL displaced them from their homes more than one week ago.
Eliana Nabaa, UNAMI’s spokesperson said more than 10,000 people from Sinjar have been evacuated, but thousands of people remain trapped and aiding them is now the UN’s top humanitarian priority.
“The situation is extremely fluid,” Ms. Nabaa said from Erbil in northern Iraq. She said the people lack everything, from food and water to shelter, mattresses and medicines. “There were some air drops operations but it is not enough because the situation is extremely difficult.”
The UN, with international and national partners, is studying the possibility of opening a humanitarian corridor to try to extract people from this area, the spokesperson said. In addition, more than 200,000 other people are believed to have made their way to Dahuk governorate in the Kurdistan region, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that half of the people displaced are children.
“We are facing a mounting humanitarian crisis that is not likely to be reduced or lowered in the days to come,” Ms. Nabaa said, “so we are extremely mobilized in the sense of providing the necessary life-saving assistance to whatever number of people.”
Also on Monday, the Iraqi Ministry of Health, supported by the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched a polio immunization campaign aiming to protect over four million children under the age of five.
“This campaign comes at a critical time while the country is witnessing a huge internal exodus of children fleeing violence and turmoil,” said
Marzio Babille, UNICEF Iraq Representative. The WHO representative in the country, Dr. Syed Jaffar Hussain added that “as the violence spreads, children are being displaced up to three times with their families, often living in overcrowded conditions where they are at a much higher risk of contracting infectious diseases.”
The four-day immunization campaign is part of the national response to the re-emergence of the polio virus earlier this year, which ended nearly 14 years of Iraq’s polio-free status.