I thought my recent piece in Al Jazeera may be of interest to this list.
Adam.
The hidden injuries of Iraqi refugees Psychological health and well-being
issues plague one of the largest refugee populations in the world.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201161145151506146.html
Little attention has been given in the post-conflict reconstruction of Iraq
to the health and well-being of refugees and their children. Indeed, with
the advent of the Arab Spring, the situation of displaced Iraqi refugees
has left media, public and national policy agendas altogether. But almost a
decade after US and British troops first touched down on Iraqi soil,
families continue to lack basic resources. Children are living in a very
fragile and tense social environment - which in countries such as Syria,
Jordan and Lebanon is getting worse by the day, given the current social
uprisings.
The devastating social effects in terms of increased civilian mortality of
the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq has been demonstrated by research
such as that produced by the Iraq Family Health Survey and the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studies published in the Lancet.
However, scant research or policy attention has been given to the
suffering, death and psychological impacts caused by displacement and the
poverty experienced by one of the largest refugee populations in modern
history.
It is estimated that some 4.5 million refugees have been uprooted from
their homes since the Iraq conflict began in 2003 and escalated in 2006,
almost half of whom sought asylum in countries such as Syria, Jordan,
Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey. In Syria, the government estimates that there
are between one and 1.2 million Iraqis, approximately half of whom are
children and adolescents. In many cases, they are neither able to go back,
nor forward with their lives, as experiences of torture, kidnapping, severe
violence, and grief continue to fill their lives.
Lack of policy and public focus
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