Amani, a 29-year old widow from Iraq and mother of four, poignantly describes the day she was forced into marriage at the age of 16 as “the death of the girl in me.” Amani remembers crying and shouting, protesting her parent’s decision about the arranged marriage—but her pleas fell on deaf ears. On her wedding …
Many young people in Iraq have never known peace and security. The 2003 Iraq war was followed by years of sectarian violence that erupted in heavy fighting between the Iraqi military and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) in late 2013. Today, roughly 3 million Iraqis remain internally displaced due to ongoing conflicts, with more …
“We all have something inside us that will never be the same again,” says May Majid of living through the Iraq War. This theme would weave its way through our conversation: remnants of things broken and lost, and the exhausting effort of constantly trying to piece it all back together, inside and out. “Almost every …
July 2018 marks one year since Iraqi forces and their allies retook the city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), after three years of occupation. As many as 1 million people fled the city due to the conflict, but today 870,000 have already returned to their hometown. Hiba, Mental …
Jameel Mohammed, aged 63 years, was forced to leave his home in Syria as a result of the war. The dire humanitarian situation inside the country is among the worst crises in recent history, and has forced some 5.6 million Syrians to seek refuge in neighboring countries. In Iraq alone, almost 250,000 Syrians are registered …
A mother of five, 48-year-old Amina Yakoub is suffering from angina pectoris, joint pains, and diabetes. Amina is from Kobane City in the north of Syria. She left Kobane when fighting between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and opposition forces broke out in the city. She first moved to Turkey for …
At only 25 years old, Hana’a* has already had to demonstrate immense strength and resilience to overcome hardship and insecurity amidst ongoing conflict and acute gender inequality in Iraq. She lives in Fallujah, located in western Iraq’s Anbar governorate. The city’s population suffered considerably under the Islamic State, which took control by force in 2014. …
As a self-taught seamstress and the loving caretaker of her deceased brothers’ children, 41-year-old Sawsan serves as a constant inspiration to those around her. Sawsan* grew up within a large family in Iraq, the daughter of an ambulance driver and a stay-at-home mother. She dropped out of school at the primary level and, at 20 …
Is home where your heart is, as the popular saying goes? Or is it, as Webster’s dictionary defines it, just “one’s place of residence”? What does home mean to the more than 65 million people displaced globally because of war, violence, natural disaster and persecution? They live in temporary, uncertain and often chaotic conditions, far …
Syria’s relentless civil war enters its eighth year this month with no sign of any end to what has become this century’s bloodiest, most brutal conflict. The fighting has claimed an estimated one-half million lives and caused nearly half the country’s pre-war population of 21 million to flee their homes for safety, either elsewhere inside …