Solidarity with Iraq’s orphans

Hussein Al-alak, the Iraq Solidarity Campaign

Only silence has echoed through the corridors of power in Great Britain, in relation to the news that 4.5 million child orphans now exist in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. The ministry also announced in January, that there are an estimated 500,000 orphans now living in Iraq’s streets, without accommodation or an appropriate care provider, as the Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq reported, that there are only around 459 orphans who are currently residing in Iraqi government funded orphanages. There is uncertainty as to how many children are actually being held in "detention" inside of prisons in Iraq, or even information relating to the welfare of children who are now resident in refugee camps as a result of the crisis. There also exists no record of those children who have been kidnapped by criminal gangs and whose lives are being held hostage for use in the now booming sex trade...

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