The US State Department on Wednesday detailed where the funds will go after Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States will provide nearly 48 million dollars in additional humanitarian aid to meet the urgent needs of Iraqi internally displaced and refugees throughout the region.
The assistance includes nearly 37 million dollars through the international and non-governmental organizations working to meet the needs of those affected by violence within Iraq, and nearly 11 million dollars through non-governmental organizations to assist Iraqi refugees who have fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, the department announced.
The sum brings the total amount of US humanitarian assistance to displaced Iraqis to more than 186 million dollars in fiscal 2014, the department said.
US humanitarian aid is providing food and clean water, shelter materials, latrines and sanitation infrastructure, hygiene kits and other urgently needed relief supplies to help the 1.8 million people who have been displaced inside Iraq since January and the more than 141,000 Iraqi refugees in the region, the announcement noted.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), which is based in Erbil, is working closely with local officials, the United Nations, other donors and humanitarian relief agencies to identify needs and scale up life-saving assistance for those caught in the midst of the conflict, the announcement said.
Last week, the DART air-lifted 60 metric tons of much-needed USAID relief supplies to help families in some of the most conflict-affected areas in Iraq, it said. A portion of these supplies are already being distributed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to families in Amerli, which was recently liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, it said.
Included in the new funding is 18 million dollars to IOM; 1 million dollars to UN Habitat; and more than 28 million dollars to non-governmental organizations, it said.