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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

IRAQ: Interview with ICRC spokeswoman

BAGHDAD, 8 September 2003 (IRIN) - The spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq says the scaling down of operations was a temporary measure which would hopefully not affect operations in a big way.

The ICRC is continuing its work, concentrating on visiting detainees and ensuring that they are being held in a way that is acceptable to the Geneva Convention. In an interview with IRIN in Baghdad, Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the ICRC, said that the organisation still hoped to increase services provided to the people of Iraq security permitting.

QUESTION: What is ICRC doing following the blast at the UN headquarters in Baghdad. What decisions has ICRC taken in terms of staffing?

ANSWER: We have reduced the staff, but it’s not linked directly linked to the UN bombing. This decision of reducing staff a little bit in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad came as a result of the prevailing insecurity in the country - a series of tragic events, starting with the killing of one of our colleagues on the 22nd of July, then the bombing of the Jordanian embassy, the horrible bombing of the UN, and the very sad bombing in Najaf. It’s more the prevailing, volatile situation that made our management think that it would be difficult at this stage to guarantee the safety of a big number of staff.

After the war, the ICRC had tremendously increased our activities and consequently increased the number of staff. It’s difficult in this situation to guarantee the security of locals or expatriates, or even the hundreds of Iraqis coming every day to our offices for different purposes. We really hope it will be a temporary measure, because we are aware that the needs are still immense in this country. It was a very hard decision to take.

What we have decided is to work out various ways of carrying out most activities with a limited number of staff. We found different ways in Baghdad to carry out the visits to the detainees, for example. Some of the people who have left Baghdad have been relocated to Amman, or to the north (of Iraq), which means they can be relocated to Baghdad if needed. The people who left, most of them worked in administrative matters, and these matters can be dealt with, even if you’re not on the spot.

Q: What types of activities are you doing?

A: We’re still concentrating on the visits to the detainees - those held by coalition forces here, the transmission of messages from detainees to their families and from the families to the detainees. This is an essential activity. We’ll keep working to maintain and fix and repair water stations - water pumping stations and water treatment stations, as well as hospitals, to ensure the flow of water.

We provide ad hoc surgical and medical equipment whenever needed. The day after the bombing in Najaf, we immediately sent a truck loaded with medical and surgical items to the city. This ad hoc support to hospitals will definitely continue.

Q: How many expatriates are here?

A: We have reduced by half the number of employees of expatriates and nationals. Everybody is still employed by the ICRC, so they’re more or less on standby.

Q: When you visit the detainees, what is the procedure?

A: We always visit the detention place, register detainees individually, monitor the conditions of detention. We look into the availability of water, of food, of medical care, conditions in general, visit all the premises, and hold private interviews with each detainee without a witness. These are the conditions we apply everywhere. Then we discuss (what we see) with the person in charge of this detention place. If we have (critical) remarks, we do them bilaterally to the detaining authority. That’s the standard procedure everywhere.

In the Geneva Conventions, the third one, concerning prisoners of war, and the fourth one, concerning civilians, make provisions on what detainees are entitled to - to this much food, this much water, maybe cigarettes. It’s very detailed, the provisions, and what are their rights and what are the obligations of the detaining authority. So we follow the book and we check with the detaining authority how this is applied.

Q: Are prisoners of war in Iraq treated differently than the civilian prisoners?

A: Prisoners of war have a legal status that is completely different. You cannot try a prisoner of war because he has been fighting. For instance, you (can) try a civilian because he went into a military operation, but a prisoner of war is combat and has a right to fight. You cannot try him for that. You can try him for a war crime for instance. Prisoners of war are supposed to be released at the end of hostilities, which is not the case for the civilian detainees. You can hold them as long as the trial has to go on, etc., so there are different judicial guarantees for each.

Q: What about the security of detainees? Why did the coalition forces change their classification?

A: You have two main categories, either prisoner of war, a POW, or a civilian. Within this civilian category, you can either be a security detainee, a civilian internee or a common-law detainee - these are the three legal categories. They cannot keep them indefinitely. (Detainees) have to go through a trial period, but there is an obligation to release a prisoner of war at the end of hostilities.

Q: What do you expect going forward, six months from now, one year from now?

A: As I said, we’re still carrying on our main activities with a reduced staff. In Baghdad, it’s a huge workload on everybody here. It’s hopefully a very temporary measure. We believe we should work, increase the geographical scope of our activities and provide more services, because there are more needs. Hopefully it will be very short, and we can go back to full-fledged operations.

Q: What else is the ICRC doing in Iraq at the moment?

A: We work on explosive awareness, on the dangers of unexploded ordnance after the war, a major activity that we carry out with the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. We train the volunteers of the Red Crescent Society so they can visit villages in Iraq and raise awareness of the dangers of mines, abandoned ammunition, cluster bombs, whatever. As you know, there have been many incidents in Iraq involving many casualties so this is an important program.

We also transmit messages between the families and the detained people. Now, we’re distributing the messages directly to the families. This will reduce some pressure on the office. We also have relief distribution and food and non-food assistance to displaced people and hospitals. We went to a displaced persons camp in Baghdad. We gave them some assistance, they were under tents and there was a lack of clean water.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Governance, (IRIN) Human Rights

[ENDS]

This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003