The crisis rages on

Ten million people – half of them children – are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance and 3.4 million have been forced to leave their homes.

From the city of Mosul alone, in the past few months 270,000 people have left their homes, out of fear, out of running away from assassination, execution, from the bombs, from the mines, from starvation and it just shakes you to the core when you hear the stories. More recently an airstrike in Mosul, has killed over 200 civilians. This is just a glimpse into the life of the Iraqi people, where everyday is a struggle between life and death.

Approximately 80% of the population of Mosul (Iraq's second largest city) is still stuck inside the city. The continued fighting is dangerous and life is beyond miserable. Severe lack of food and clean water is pushing the 1.5million people inside Mosul to incomprehensible hardship.

Many of the people that we speak to feel often too ashamed to speak about what they have endured. We’ve heard stories of men, women and children running across front lines and being shot and killed by snipers, trying to flee the city.

These people have lost absolutely everything! They lost their homes, their family members, children lost their parents, mothers and fathers have lost their children. It is absolutely devastating! 

The need is great

The difficult situation that these people are facing is exemplified by the fact that there is no food, there is no clean water, things are just becoming more and more desperate. You can see the fear in the people’s faces here that have fled Mosul, there is no trust for anyone, they have been abused in so many different ways unfortunately from so many different angles and the hope is almost dead.

We saw in one of the distributions thousands of starving people waiting to receive some type of food. One of the people that we saw was this very very old lady, very fragile who could hardly walk waiting for hours for just some type of food. 

In the end, all she received was an orange and as she walked away she found a small child that hadn’t received anything and she gave that orange to that child. It is unbelievably heart-warming to see when someone has nothing, they are still able to share it with their fellow human beings.   

How you can help

Human appeal is here on the front line in Iraq, in Mosul, delivering to people who have never received any type of aid, any type of help for over 3 years. We are one of the very few international organisations in the world with an office inside the city delivering directly to the residents of Mosul in risky circumstances. We desperately need people to come forward and to help respond to the people or Iraq, to the people of Mosul so we can deliver more aid, more water so that we are able to take children out of poverty and families out of immense hardship. 

This is an appeal to my friends, family, contacts and anyone who stumbles across this plea. We need to do more here in Iraq and we simply don't have enough funds to reach the people in need that we have the capacity to. Time is critical. 

Food Security and Livelihoods