Multi-ethnic approach to humanitarian crisis.

Aid worker Zaid Al-Rawni, from Birmingham, has just returned to the UK after seeing the Islamic Relief charity’s work providing help to Christians, Yazidis and Muslims driven from their homes amidst the brutal conflict that has created Iraq’s most severe humanitarian crisis since 2006.

“Over 1.2 million Iraqis have fled their homes to seek a place of safety in the past seven months,” says Zaid, who lives in Hall Green and is Islamic Relief UK’s Head of Communications. “Many have been forced to leave with only the clothes they were wearing, and have dispersed across 1,400 locations. Large numbers of people are sheltering in churches, schools, mosques, unfinished buildings and makeshift camps.”

Zaid met a group of 800 displaced people who were sheltering in the shell of an unfinished school building offering minimal comforts – no running water, no toilets and nothing but a rough concrete floor to sleep on. “As a father of three young children I was horrified to see the appalling conditions that children, women and the elderly are being forced to live in, and these in a sense are the lucky ones who managed to escape the conflict.”

Islamic Relief has been working in Iraq since 2003, and has extensive experience of working with traumatised people. The charity is among the few organisations providing aid and support to those who so desperately need it in the war-torn north – whether Christian, Yazidi or Muslim. Over the past seven months, Islamic Relief has assisted over 160,000 people. During his visit, Zaid helped distribute food, water and other supplies such as mattresses, blankets and hygiene kits to those in need, irrespective of their religion.

One of the displaced people he met was 40-year-old Sherman Haj, sheltering in the unfinished school with her two youngest children after fleeing Islamic State fighters. “They came from nowhere and they have no mercy,” she told Zaid. “We have nothing left, nothing, and I want to leave this place. I want to move far, far away from here and from these problems.”

Zaid says: “This was just one family in one place of refuge in what is a large and complex emergency. When you consider that there are 1.2 million displaced people like Sherman Haq across Iraq, it really brings home the enormity of this crisis.”