Two years have passed since Iraq was officially “liberated” from the Islamic State (IS) group control. Yet over 1.3 million Iraqi people -who fled their homes because of the war- are still displaced, and over 300,000 of them still live in camps across the country. Multiple years of displacement has left many without the financial resources to be able to reconstruct their houses in order to go back. For these people there is no where they can go. Additionally, slow reconstruction of infrastructure, lack of job opportunities, difficulty to access basic services such as education and healthcare, as well as the intercommunal conflicts that arose during and after the war in their areas of origin, are only making the returns slower. This has left people with no choice other than to stay in the camps, waiting for solutions while in poor living conditions.

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, camp residents are among the most vulnerable to the disease due to factors that may accelerate the spread of the virus inside camps. Those factors include the inability to adequately implement social distancing with people living in overcrowded tents just a few meters away from each other, as well as among family members who live in small tent spaces difficulty in self-isolating people with COVID-like symptoms; frequent sharing of water and sanitation and kitchen facilities; and limited access to hygiene supply and personal protective equipment to use when attending crowded places in the camp (like the market or during distributions).