SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Half of the families living in drought-affected areas of Iraq need humanitarian food aid, the Norwegian Refugee Council said in a study on Thursday.
“One in two families in drought-affected regions require food assistance because of drought, while one in five do not have sufficient food for everyone in the family,” the NRC said in its research.
The NGO based its study on interviews in 2,806 homes across seven provinces, among them Anbar, Basra and Nineveh.
The United Nations says about one-third of Iraq’s population lives in poverty, despite the country’s oil wealth.
“Communities across Iraq have faced damaging losses to their crops, livestock, and income. Children are eating less, and farmers and displaced populations are hit hardest,” the report said.
The NRC said 37 percent of farmers growing wheat and 30 percent of those planting barley saw their expected crop yields fall by at least 90%.
The effects of low rainfall have been exacerbated as the levels of the country’s two main rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, drop because of upstream dams in neighboring Iran and Turkey.
On Wednesday, Iraqi minister of water resources Mahdi Rashid said Iran had completely cut off water from Iraq, adding that the decline in rain will rise the “state of desertification”.
