Iraq must address its crises, including the containment of the coronavirus pandemic, or the country will head into "extreme" poverty, the UN said on Tuesday.
The country faces the same dilemma as much of the world - whether to ease restrictions to help economic activity, or maintain a lockdown to avoid the virus’s spread.
A report by the UN development program conveyed that years of economic, environmental, political, societal and security, had a lasting impact on the country which gave rise to the current coronavirus pandemic.
“For Iraq, decades of conflict have hampered the country’s stability and stunted its prosperity. The onset of Covid-19 and the oil crisis has exacerbated existing fragilities in the country,” Resident Representative of UNDP Iraq, Zena Ali Ahmad, said in a statement.
“In fragile countries, social safety nets are weak and insufficiently address the basic needs of the most vulnerable groups in society. This ultimately results in deeper social inequalities,” she said.
Plummeting prices for oil, which accounts for almost all Iraq’s revenue, are already squeezing the economy, forcing the government to mull cuts to its vast public sector payroll.
“Iraq’s fragility is not a result of one single event; it involves a number of intricate factors that have collectively impacted every aspect of the country’s development, and these must be closely considered when charting the path to Iraq’s recovery from the pandemic,” Ms Ahmad said.
The country has recorded 156,995 coronavirus cases and a death rate of near 6,0000 amid a rise in daily cases.
The Health Ministry recorded nearly 3,400 new cases and 67 deaths over the last 24 hours.
Yet, despite the rise in cases the country has not reached its coronavirus peak, the deputy Minister of Health Hazim Al Jumaili said on Monday.
"This indicates that the citizens are not abiding by the instructions of the Health Ministry and the High Committee for Health and National Safety," Mr Al Jumaili said in a statement.
The Higher Committee for Health of National Safety, that oversees the crisis and is headed by Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi, is expected to hold a meeting at the end of the week to discuss the health restrictions during the upcoming Holy month of Muharram.
Authorities have imposed a partial nationwide curfew since the outbreak of the pandemic in early March.
The Committee said on Tuesday that it will extend the curfew till August 15, after that a partial curfew will continue every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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