U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green announced millions of dollars in new funding to support victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State terrorist group in northern Iraq.
Despite almost $400 million in American aid to communities in northern Iraq, close to 1 million Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities remain displaced in the wake of ISIS’ campaign of terror. To further aid these communities, Green unveiled new funding for partner organizations in Iraq at a Wednesday event hosted by the Accord Network, an association of Christian humanitarian organizations.
USAID will give almost $4 million in grants to six local groups in Iraq as part of the New Partnerships Initiative, an effort launched in May to expand USAID’s partner base, according to a press release. With these new financial awards, American funding for persecuted minorities in northern Iraq since 2017 will surpass $400 million.
Among the recipients is the Philadelphia Organization for Relief and Development, which will use the funds to build a community center in Qaraqosh, a predominantly Christian town where about half of the Christian families displaced by ISIS have returned. In addition, funding given to the Jiyan Foundation for Human Rights will support trauma rehabilitation services for genocide survivors as well as interreligious and interethnic dialogue.
Apart from the six grants for local groups, USAID will give $9 million to Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian humanitarian aid organization, to help displaced minorities return to northern Iraq.
Wednesday’s announcement comes less than two weeks after USAID awarded almost $7 million to Catholic Relief Services to assist the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil in northern Iraq. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to genocide victims a USAID official said last week there has been “only modest success” in the U.S. government’s effort to help victims return home, with a lack of security posing a major challenge.
Militia units known as Popular Mobilization Forces, which emerged to fight ISIS and are mostly made up of Shia Muslims, operate freely in parts of northern Iraq. These militias are often loyal to Iran, and they have impeded the return of displaced individuals to towns such as Batnaya and Bartella.
But if security is the primary challenge to enabling displaced persons to return home, cohesion among minority communities is also an obstacle.
“The second greatest challenge is making sure these communities which have been oppressed, attacked in ways that are almost incomprehensible, they also need to stick together and work together,” Green told the Washington Examiner. “And we need Christian communities, whether it be Orthodox or Chaldean Catholic, they need to be working together as communities for the sake of the whole.”
“The existence and success of each of these communities is key to restoring that sense of the mosaic of faiths and the mosaic of communities that ISIS tried to destroy,” said Green.
