Czech humanitarian aid to Iraq

As the war in Iraq continues, there are growing concerns over the humanitarian consequences. Public opinion about the war remains deeply divided here in the Czech Republic, but there is consensus over the need to help alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people once the conflict ends. In a more or less symbolic gesture, the government has offered humanitarian assistance in the form of tents and blankets to Turkey in the event of a refugee crisis. The Czech Republic is not part of the US-led coalition that is invading Iraq and the government has stressed that the presence of Czech anti-chemical-weapon troops in Kuwait is itself part of the humanitarian rather than the military operation - dealing with the consequences of a possible chemical or biological weapons attack.

Czech humanitarian aid to Iraq

The prime minister, Vladimir Spidla:

"If weapons of mass destruction are used, the Czech unit will help to save people's lives, and deal with the consequences of the use of such weapons, wherever such an attack may take place. This is our humanitarian obligation. I cannot imagine a situation in which our soldiers would stand by and just watch while people were dying as the result of chemical or bacteriological weapons."

The government is also discussing the possibility of deploying a military field hospital as part of the humanitarian operation after the war. This is the same hospital, complete with operating theatre and intensive care unit, that played a role last year in Afghanistan, offering basic medical care to the country's civilian population.

But it certainly is not just the government or the military that have made a commitment to helping in Iraq. A number of Czech-based aid organizations have already started putting together emergency programmes. For example, the Czech branch of the international aid agency ADRA plans to send a truck to the Turkish border with Iraq with food and sanitary products for refugees, and the People in Need Foundation - the aid organization attached to Czech Television - has launched a collection: "SOS Iraq". For an organization based in a relatively small country like the Czech Republic, People in Need has an impressive reputation. In the ten years of its existence, it has offered over 17 million US dollars' worth of assistance - working in such diverse places as Kosovo, Chechnya and Afghanistan.

I'm joined by People in Need's Igor Blazevic to talk about the organisation's plans in Iraq:

Igor Blazevic:"We have made the decision that our priority will be to enter Iraq as soon as will be possible in order to be involved in a more long-term assistance, more long-term aid, and we will most probably focus on education and health-care, meaning reconstructing the facilities. We have very good experiences with a similar type of work in Afghanistan. We have now built up dozens and dozens of schools, mainly primary schools, and we think that we will use a similar method and similar know-how and implement it in Iraq. In the case that there will be a major humanitarian crisis, which I think nobody now is able to estimate, then we will react immediately to the needs, so if there will be big shifts of the civilian population, if they will be trapped without water, without tents and so on, then we will try to react to that, but it's not our priority."

How does this work in practice? It involves getting a lot of people to a lot of places very quickly, and getting operations working smoothly really in very difficult circumstances. How do you work?

"It does not need a lot of people. We will probably already next week send an experienced team to the region, and we shall wait for the moment when they can enter Iraq in order to make an evaluation of the situation and to make the first concrete planning at the start. The main work is basically done here in Prague. We need to get significant amounts of money in order to be able to launch the operation of that type. We are negotiating with representatives of the Czech government, hoping that the Czech government will allocate some funds for the development aid of Iraq after the end of the war phase. And we are also negotiating with some US foundations, which have been our long-term supporting agencies."

In purely practical terms what are you going to be doing - helping to rebuild hospitals or schools, to provide them with equipment, for example? What does the work actually look like in the field?

Logo of the foundation People in Need

"In the field it looks like this: you identify the already existing education facilities, which are usually in a post-conflict situation in a very bad shape. You invest some funds in their reconstruction. Very often you try to use the method of employing the local people in reconstructing the local educational or health-care facilities. So in that sense you are not only providing the facilities for the reconstruction of the educational system, but you are providing work for the local people, which is as important. The parallel process is that we are trying to provide the core funds, which will pay the local employees, which will work in schools, because very often it's not enough to reconstruct the walls. But what is even more important for some period of time is to allocate the funds for the teachers, for the managers of the school."

On the subject of funds, obviously to get things working you're going to need quite a lot of money pretty fast. You mentioned the possibility of getting some money as a grant from the Czech government. What are the other sources?

"It's now too early to say how we will finally finance our operations in Iraq. Usually we have three main resources, all for the humanitarian operations. One is the humanitarian campaigns we organize here in the Czech Republic - we are opening a bank account where sympathetic citizens of the Czech Republic can contribute. Another resource is the various foundations. We usually get some funds from the Czech government, which we use as project money, and once we are on the ground - in six months' time or eight months' time - we already start to become an implementing partner of the UN agencies, meaning that we are implementing projects that are funded by the UN. In this particular moment it is still not clear in which way UN funds will be channeled to the region, if they will be channeled. I think at the end of the day some funds will be channeled but it is still not clear how and when."

The Czech Republic is a relatively small country. It is a long way from the conflict zone. Already People in Need has made a name for itself in Afghanistan, in Kosovo, and has done real work to help people there. How is it that from this small country in Central Europe there's been such a wave of support and you've managed to do so much useful work?

"I think that it really comes with freedom and with democracy. At the moment when the Czech Republic became a free, democratic country, at the moment when the Czech Republic is becoming a full-fledged member of NATO, at the moment when the Czech Republic is on the way to becoming a member of the EU, then it's very natural and very logical that the Czech state is becoming a responsible partner of the international community. And I have always been in favour of the principle that the political matters are not only the matter of the state management, but it's also the matter of the individual citizens, which can make their contribution in solving the global problems. Here in the Czech Republic as well as in many other places, there are a lot of young people who are ready to dedicate part of their time, part of their energy and creativity, and to assist people abroad they invest a couple of years of their life into that, and this is a simple consequence of the fact that Czech society is not today a communist state, but it's a free, democratic country."

And you can find out more about People in Need in Czech and English on their website www.clovekvtisni.cz.