Childhoods in Iraq are under attack
With dozens of camps for people displaced by conflict set to close, thousands more children in Iraq will be forced to return to explosive-ridden homes. You can help make them safe.
Since 2014, the ISIS occupation has forced millions of people across Iraq to abandon their homes and flee, often at a moment’s notice, in a desperate attempt to survive. For most, ‘home’ became the various camps set up to provide shelter for those who had managed to escape the violence.
Sidra is one of the countless children in Iraq who have been affected by conflict. Huge numbers of landmines are hidden in the fields around her village. Her family risk setting off a deadly explosion whenever they farm the land.
Sidra attends school in the city during the week, but at the weekends she is at home helping tend to her family’s livestock – surrounded by minefields. To make a dangerous situation even more terrifying, the area is on a slope, so landmines can shift and fall at any time.
MAG teams have successfully cleared more than two acres of land in Sidra’s village, but there is still much more to be done with two fields still contaminated.
A gift of £22 today could help clear 10 square metres of land in areas formerly held by ISIS. This International Mine Awareness Day, will you help make Sidra safe?
I'll help make Sidra safe
Give £5 a month
Your gift of £5 per month could pay for a deminer to work for one more hour in Iraq, clearing land for returning families to live safely.
Give £10 a month
Your gift of £10 per month could pay for a deminer to work for two more hours in Iraq, clearing land for returning families to live safely.
Give £14 a month
Your gift of £14 per month could pay for two family packs of posters, leaflets and games, to teach two families how to stay safe around landmines and IEDs.
Or an amount of your choice
Your gift could help make returning families safe.
Give £22 today
Your gift of £22 could help clear 10 square metres of land in areas formerly held by ISIS, so communities can begin to rebuild their lives.
Give £40 today
Your gift of £40 could fund a deminer for one day, clearing land for families to farm and support themselves.
Give £110 today
Your gift of £110 could help clear 50 square metres of land in areas formerly held by ISIS, so communities can begin to rebuild their lives.
Or an amount of your choice
Your gift could help make returning families safe.
Reporting on the landmine crisis in Iraq
Colin Freeman has reported on our work in Iraq since 2017. His articles, published in The Telegraph, describe his visits to this beautiful country and the devastating impact that landmines have had on the women, men, girls, and boys he has met there.
During his latest visit, Colin visited ‘The House of Horrors’, part of a demining training school, which emulates a home booby-trapped with ISIS Improvised Explosive Devices [IEDs].
Colin recounts, “To my fatally untutored eye, it looked just like an ordinary cooking pot, brimming with rice. But the moment I lifted it from the hob, an ominous alarm sounded – announcing that once again, I’d blown up both myself and the building around me to kingdom come.”
Colin has seen the death and devastation caused by the mines and bombs that litter Iraq. And he has witnessed the impact that clearance has on people’s lives. For some children in Iraq, it is the first time they have ever felt safe. That’s why he supports MAG, and why he is asking you to stand with us today against landmines and other explosives.
You can help make more children safe in Iraq. Thank you.
Photos by Sean Sutton/MAG
