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Social / CSR in Iraq

  • ‘I was sold seven times': the Yazidi women welcomed back into the faith

    IRAQ, 2017/07/02 No one wears shoes in Lalish. The village is so sacred that all visitors must walk its paths barefoot. Perched at the top of a narrow valley, in the parched, scrubby hills of northern Iraq, close to the Kurdish border, its cluster of shrines are a revered site for followers of the Yazidi faith. At the heart of Lalish is a pool of water sheltered by a small cave, its entrance shaded by mulberry trees and watched by a guardian in a red turban. This is the “holy white spring”, where newborns must be brought for baptism, the waters mixed with the Lalish soil for the rites of marriage, birth and death. For generations, the rituals carried out at the spring had been unchanged. But two years ago, groups of women, usually silent, often with young children, began joining the families filtering in and out of the cave.

  • Iraq PM calls for legal measures over oil bribery scandal

    IRAQ, 2016/09/01 Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called Saturday for legal action over allegations that senior officials took millions of dollars in bribes to help major firms fasten lucrative oil sector contracts. Abadi instructed the country's anti-corruption commission to take "legal measures" and called for the judiciary to pursue prosecutions connected to the scandal, a statement from his office said. The allegations of corruption came to light in an investigation by The Huffington Post and Fairfax Media, which reviewed thousands of internal documents from Monaco-based firm Unaoil.

  • US Defense Chief Carter Congratulates Iraqi PM On Retaking Ramadi

    IRAQ, 2016/01/03 US Defense Secretary Ash Carter offered his congratulations to Iraq’s prime minister next Iraqi forces succeeded in retaking the government center in Ramadi from the Islamic National of Iraq and the Levant. “‎The expulsion of ISIL by Iraqi security forces, supported by our international coalition, is a significant step forward in the campaign to defeat this barbaric group and replace Iraq’s territorial sovereignty,” Carter said in a statement.‎ The operation to reach the center of Ramadi was a significant milestone on the path to clear ISIL from the historic city and the in general campaign to defeat the terrorist group across Iraq, according to a statement released by Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve officials today.

  • Displacement has left Iraq’s Yazidis with very little, driving some to seek to leave the country and others to despair

    IRAQ, 2015/08/08 "It's just unbearable," Abbas, 40, said of the excessive heat. “There is little electricity. We get it for three hours and then no electricity for the next three hours. We are given water [by the government] only one hour per day." Izzat Abbas, along with a group of men and children, took refuge in the shade by a prefabricated cabin in a refugee camp for displaced Yazidis. They chat and occasionally laugh while they try to keep their spirits up. But their sunburned faces show more exhaustion than content. The temperature is 47 degrees Celsius (116.6 Fahrenheit) and there is no electricity, which causes the camp residents to flee cabins they described as being as hot as "ovens."

  • 25 years later: Did Kuwait invasion doom Iraq?

    IRAQ, 2015/08/08 The Kuwait crisis of 1990 came up like a summer storm with little or no warning. Twenty-five years ago, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein threatened Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) publicly, demanding that they reduce oil production to raise prices to $20 a barrel. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a quarter of a century ago transformed America’s role in the Middle East profoundly. We are still living with the legacy of the crisis of the summer of 1990. Saddam warned that the two Gulf emirates were stealing money from Iraq by exceeding their OPEC quotas and that Baghdad would take “effective action to put things right.” Immediately the CIA reported Saddam was massing his elite Republican Guard at the border with Kuwait. By July 25, 1990, the Iraqis had mobilized over 100,000 troops on the border. Kuwait and the UAE agreed to cut production but Saddam was planning much more.

  • Arab Youth Survey Report 2015

    BAHRAIN, 2015/04/25 Confidence part Arab youth that the Arab Spring would bring positive change across the region is declining and as a result they are uncertain whether democracy could ever work in the Middle East. This is the headline finding of the 7th Annual ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey released today. - Arab youth see the rise of ISIS as the biggest obstacle facing the region - Youth are keen to start their own business as concerns about unemployment continue - The UAE remains the majority popular country to live in and emulate and Saudi Arabia is viewed as the region’s biggest ally - A lot of view the Arabic language as central to their identity but believe it is losing its price to English

  • Oxfam Study Finds Richest 1% Is Likely to Control Half of Global Wealth by 2016

    AFGHANISTAN, 2015/01/20 The richest 1 % are likely to control additional than half of the globe’s total wealth by next year, the charity Oxfam reported in a study released on Monday. The warning about deepening world inequality comes just as the world’s business elite prepare to meet this week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The 80 wealthiest people in the world all own $1.9 trillion, the statement found, nearly the same all shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the world’s gain scale. (Last year, it took 85 billionaires to equal that figure.) And the richest 1 % of the people, who number in the millions, control nearly half of the world’s total wealth, a share that is as well increasing.

  • Iraq Yazidi minority faces threat of extinction

    IRAQ, 2014/08/07 Iraqi helicopters dropped supplies Tuesday to thousands of people hiding from jihadists in desolate mountains, a lot of of them from the Yazidi minority which officials warned risked being massacred or starved into extinction. A Yazidi lawmaker broke down in tears during a parliament session as she urged the government and the international community to save her community from Islamic National militants who overran the Sinjar region. "Over the completed 48 hours, 30,000 families have been besieged in the Sinjar mountains, with no water and no food," said Vian Dakhil. "Seventy children have by presently died of thirst and 30 elderly people have as well died," she said.

  • Poverty rates on the rise in Iraq

    IRAQ, 2014/02/14 The chief of the Model Iraqi Women Organization, Athraa Hassani, provided Al-Monitor with this data, quoting World Bank officials who discussed these statistics during a conference in Turkey with a number of members of civil society organizations seeking to find a solution to the poverty crisis in Iraq. Hassani questions the accuracy of the poverty rates announced by the Iraqi government, affirming that these rates are continuously increasing because of a rise in daily violence and spike in unemployment rates in addition to a weakening of the Iraqi economy. Based on the World Bank’s figures, this would mean that out of Iraq’s 34.7 million citizens, additional than 9.5 million individuals are living below the poverty line.
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