Navigating humanitarian principles in the nexus: reflections from Iraq

Almost a decade after it began, United Nations (UN) stewardship of humanitarian aid is ending in Iraq, with coordination moving to area-based approaches co-led by the government. While the transition has been criticised by some as being too hasty, the UN’s reasons for phasing out humanitarian assistance are ostensibly valid: Iraq is no longer an emergency; humanitarian funding for the response has declined sharply; and recovery needs for a broad swathe of the population may be better addressed by development actors.

However, the reality is less clear cut. Notwithstanding the more than 260,000 Syrian refugees being hosted in the Kurdistan Region, at least 1.2 million Iraqis remain internally displaced across the country – living in informal camps projected to be closed soon. The millions who have returned, in many cases, have returned to bombed-out towns and villages in governorates like Ninewa, Kirkuk and Anbar where money is scarce, land is contested, and safety tenuous. Lack of civil documentation continues to obstruct access to government services, with around 433,000 people lacking at least one form of identification. Given challenges with tracking, it is likely these numbers are higher. In addition, an unforgiving and rapidly worsening climate is threatening to undo gains in livelihood and food security, and exacerbate risks of climate-induced displacement.

While the transition represents an opportunity to bring the full potential of international assistance in service of long-term, sustainable solutions, a purely development focus risks ignoring deep-seated protection risks impeding recovery. Without principled humanitarian assistance to integrate vulnerable and at-risk communities within emerging social safety nets, the country risks leaving millions behind in prolonged or secondary displacement.

A lot has been jointly accomplished since the defeat of the self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State’ in 2017. Across northern governorates, state-led efforts have begun repatriating Iraqis from Syria and facilitating returns of internally displaced people. In a Sinjar still scarred by destruction, a recent declaration by the government has granted ownership of Yazidi land back to the community. In Mosul, the seat of the ‘caliphate’, the rehabilitation of destroyed infrastructure by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and others is breathing new life into the city. In Kirkuk and Anbar, almost 2,000 kilometres of abandoned canals have been rejuvenated by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), contributing to increased yield across vast hectares of farmland.

In many ways, these efforts are possible due to laudable political intention, and are indicative of the nexus in action: embedding foreign assistance within nationwide infrastructure and economic plans. But as is increasingly apparent in Iraq, a ‘whole of society’ approach does not always benefit everyone.

As agencies adopt nexus programming, alignment between the humanitarian imperative and development outcomes remains a challenge. Not all who need support across Iraq are in the same phase of recovery: some farmers in Basra are looking for capital to increase production while others in Anbar are struggling to establish land rights; some 18-year-olds in Duhok are looking for employment while others in Kirkuk have been out of school for the last five years.

Large-scale development projects bankrolled by large development donors often flatten this nuance, targeting people based on feasibility rather than vulnerability. Too often, projects designed to improve community-wide resilience to shocks adopt the debunked ‘trickle down’ approach – awarding grants only to individuals who can demonstrate legal and financial capacity to run a business. In arid Ramadi and Tuz, for example, this ‘assistance bias’ translates into grants being given predominantly to male, land-owning farmers. Poor farmers, female-led households, or widows who are navigating court systems to establish inheritance are overlooked, not because they are not vulnerable, but because donors see them as a risky investment.

The assumption that these large projects will create employment opportunities for those who have been disenfranchised is usually false – the vast majority of jobs are given to members within the same family or tribe. And so, when the rains cease and the drought deepens, those families who have been overlooked are the first to be forced to move. Displacement data by the International Organization for Migration backs this up – a significant proportion of the nearly 69,000 Iraqis displaced due to climate change have been displaced from areas recovering from conflict. The need for humanitarian agencies to maintain dialogue with development donors is clear.

It is not just agencies struggling to identify who is eligible for assistance. In a context that demands expanded access to social safety nets, foundational identification systems remain uneven and exclusionary. The hundreds of thousands across Iraq who lack legal documents are predominantly from ethnic and religious groups who suffered the worst atrocities during the war and now live in abject poverty. Without legal identification, enrolling children in schools, opening bank accounts, or proving ownership of property remains impossible. A forthcoming survey of 2,400 individuals by NRC and the University College London finds at least 92% of respondents in Kirkuk, Anbar and Ninewa lack at least one form of legal identification. Additionally, a 2022 report by NRC indicates that up to two-thirds of children in these locations have not been allowed to enrol in formal schools because they do not have birth certificates.

Families suspected of previous affiliation to the Islamic State (IS) form a subset of ‘paperless people’ in Iraq. These families often face Kafkaesque barriers to obtaining civil documentation involving multiple DNA tests and, quite counterintuitively, providing physical proof of a missing father. While a review of the administrative processes indicates that all six of the known requirements imposed on families with perceived affiliations to IS are in direct contravention of multiple tenets of Iraqi civil law, these barriers continue to be applied in court cases. In Kirkuk governorate, for example, NRC is aware of only 22 out of more than 1,500 cases – less than 1.5% – in which families with perceived affiliations to IS have received civil documents.

The impact of this exclusion is far-reaching. Seven-year-old Miriam comes from a family perceived to be affiliated with IS, although her mother denies the allegation. Recently cleared for return to their ancestral home in Iraq, Miriam’s family was the victim of an arson attack that left her face scarred. The village Miriam is from is still in ruins, and even if it were to be fully reconstructed tomorrow, return would be tricky. Property deeds were destroyed in the fighting that forced them out and Miriam was born in Syria without a birth certificate. Violence has ebbed in the area the family is from, but mistrust dominates, and the conflicts of the past threaten to sweep into Iraq of the present. Building schools, or rebuilding entire city blocks, will not fully address the depth of this problem. Without safety, without documents, and without concrete measures to foster community cohesion, Iraqis like Miriam will still be strangers without support in the best rebuilt city – paperless, vulnerable, and at risk of being forgotten.

Without the safeguarding of principled assistance based on need and vulnerability, many like Miriam’s family are at risk of being relegated to the margins of society. While expansion of assistance is important in a context where millions are recovering from conflict, humanitarian principles demand the needs of the many not overshadow the needs of the few. Importantly, while perceived affiliation to IS remains linked to serious questions around justice and accountability, systemic exclusion comes with wide-ranging ramifications, including the risk of creating a lost generation and a stateless minority.

The Transition Strategy that forms the bedrock of Iraq’s current response trajectory is unclear on the way forward. Rather than a proposed plan of action that identifies responsible actors across government functions, the document is more a summary of what has been done thus far.

However, recent discussions around a ‘Compact for Iraq’ provides an opportunity to draft a policy document jointly with the government that would start where the Transition Strategy ended, and identify key areas of need, sources of funding, and lines of state responsibility. Importantly, utilising the full menu of options to displacement in Iraq will first require government consensus on a shared vision of what solutions can look like. While sustainable local integration, sustainable relocation, or sustainable return to areas of origin are logical options, there are bureaucratic barriers to each resolution, including lack of alignment on who an internally displaced person is in the country, lack of compensation for destroyed property, and discriminatory processes to obtaining civil documentation.

There are several steps that can be taken to increase chances of success.

First, all actors need to acknowledge that the ‘care and maintenance’ approach to humanitarian aid applied in Iraq must shift toward development-oriented programming. This acknowledgment needs to be tempered with the understanding that a broadening of focus does not negate the necessity of humanitarian principles required to reach those at greatest risk of being left behind.

Second, donors need to break silos between humanitarian and development assistance, not reinforce them. Working in consortia, or at least collaborating with both single- and multi-mandate partners (agencies which only provide humanitarian assistance versus those who engage in humanitarian and development programming) should be encouraged and will go a long way in forging stronger connections between stakeholders.

Importantly, disagreements over principled assistance are not constrained to discussions with donors. Local and national authorities are often unwilling to cede on protecting the confidentiality of people at risk of violence or abuse, granting access to populations based on vulnerability alone, or recognising humanitarian agencies as independent of the Western political structures they originate from. But for effective consultations to work, for negotiations to yield results, those who fund humanitarian aid and those who deliver it need to speak with one voice. Without clusters, and with a vastly reduced UN presence, non-governmental organisations have a responsibility to lead the charge.

Lastly, humanitarian agencies and the UN in Iraq must clearly identify linkages between social protection and principled humanitarian assistance, and adopt a unified framework. While durable solutions necessitate a government-led approach, existing humanitarian presence in the country offers a wealth of experience that can shape the approach taken to link principled assistance to broader social protection outcomes.

The price of failure is steep. In an informal school near the Iraq–Syria border, paintings by children adorn the walls. Many of these children were born in displacement and now find themselves unwanted in a country they have only known through war. Almost all of them have never seen the inside of a formal school. One of the paintings depicts a college graduation, and on the top left, there is a short note scrawled in Arabic: ‘I will wear the graduation hat, even if it is on the last day of my life.’

Imrul Islam is the Advocacy Manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Iraq.