I. CAUSES OF FLIGHT FROM IRAQ

Since the fall of the government of Saddam Hussein, refugees and other non-nationals living in Iraq have been subjected to harassment, violent attacks, and forced evictions from their homes. Small groups of Iraqi men typically perpetrated the attacks, usually warning those targeted to leave Iraq. Hundreds of foreigners, particularly Palestinians, Iranian Kurds, Sudanese, Somalis, among other nationalities, chose to flee as a result, feeling that their lives were at risk and that Iraq was no longer a safe place for them.

Palestinians

Direct Attacks and Threats of Physical Violence
Human Rights Watch interviewed eighteen Iraqi Palestinian refugees at the refugee camp outside the town of al-Ruweished near the Jordanian-Iraqi border. Human Rights Watch also visited two of the affected neighborhoods in Baghdad, al-Hurriyya and al-Baladiyyat, and spoke to many of the residents there. Scores of families had already been expelled from their homes or left after being given notice. The threats against some families and throughout neighborhoods known for housing Palestinians served to frighten still others, causing the refugees to arrive in Jordan in at least two waves. The first Palestinians who reached Jordan on April 19, after the fall of Baghdad, "arrived with almost nothing."⁴ The second wave, arriving as of April 30, came "with personal effects, indicating they had time to organize themselves and pack."⁵

In one case, on April 11, violence against a Palestinian family in Baghdad led to the death of an infant and the wounding of six others. In a refugee camp at al-Ruweished, Jordan on April 27, Human Rights Watch interviewed Nazima Sulaiman, a mother aged fifty, three of whose children were wounded in an attack on the family home, located off Mukhtar Street in the neighborhood of al-Hurriyya, close to al-Khashab Mosque. She said that on the day Baghdad fell, "fifteen armed men came to our house. They were not from our area ... They told us `This home is for Iraqis, you own nothing. Saddam was protecting you, go and ask Saddam to find you another home.'" Two days later the attack took place. "Had we known they were serious we would have gone," Nazima said.⁶

In the Baghdad neighborhood of al-Hurriyya on April 29, Human Rights Watch located Nazima's nephew, `Imad al-Din `Abdul-Ghani Muhammad, a thirty-seven year-old employee of the Iraqi Accounting Commission. He told Human Rights Watch:

It was at about noon on the Friday after the fall of Baghdad. I was here at home when someone came and told me what had happened. Jamal [Nazima's husband] and his family lived on the second floor of a housing shelter. Two bombs were thrown from the street up towards the balcony of their home. One of them exploded and the other did not. The house was completely wrecked. My sister-in-law, Suha Kamal Mahmoud [aged twenty-nine] was badly wounded in the liver, leg and arm from the shrapnel. My maternal cousin, Said Muhammad Sulaiman [aged seventeen], was injured in the leg and back and his colon was torn. Both of them had to have operations at the hospital. Saif's mother, Wafa' `Abdul-Fattah [aged thirty-five] was slightly wounded in the legs, hands and stomach. Her wounds were light because she was carrying her seven-month old baby in her lap. The baby girl, Rawand Muhammad Sulaiman, died in her arms. Parts of her arms and legs were severed. My maternal cousin, Riman Muhammad Sulaiman [aged fourteen], was also injured in her legs. Another cousin, Walid Jamal Mahmoud [aged twenty-eight], was injured in his right arm and right leg, and pieces of shrapnel became lodged in his urinary bladder and another penetrated his diaphragm. Walid's brother, Muhammad Jamal Mahmoud [aged twenty-two], was lightly wounded in his leg and hand.

The wounded were taken to al-Yarmuk and `Adnan Khairallah hospitals in the city. `Imad al-Din told Human Rights Watch that he did not know who was responsible for the attack:

There are all sorts of incidents happening here. There is no safety. An Iraqi from our neighborhood was killed recently because he confronted some looters in the area. They had left after the confrontation but came back the next day and threw a hand grenade into his house and he died. The local clinic and a private pharmacy in our area were looted. So people are scared and they don't want to talk. Even if there were eyewitnesses who saw those responsible for throwing the cluster bombs into my relatives' house, they are not going to talk now.⁷

Murtadha M., a taxi driver, lived in an old school in the neighborhood of al-Za'faraniyya with eighty Palestinian families. An Iraqi Shi'a friend warned them that people might attack the compound, so the Palestinians deployed armed guards. Arms were readily available for purchase on the street after the looting of the nearby al-Rashid military base, he said. Kalashnikovs sold by children went for as little as 5,000 dinars (about $2.50).

The first attack occurred on April 22. "They came in a Land Cruiser, about four guys," Murtadha said. "Three of them went into the school and one of them shot in the air." The Palestinians shot at the attackers and into the air, scaring the men off.⁸ Unknown civilians soon came to the building shouting threats: "Leave al-Za'faraniyya like you left Palestine!"⁹ Murtadha decided it was best to leave. He came to Jordan to inspect the conditions, leaving his family behind.

A widowed woman named Ibetsam and her teenage children left al-Za'faraniyya after U.S. forces entered Baghdad because as Palestinians they felt vulnerable to violence. She told Human Rights Watch: "Palestinians were afraid, saying the Shi'a will attack us. I left due to the general insecurity, but the possibility of a Shi'a attack was a factor."¹⁰

Other families were more directly targeted. One man, a baker named Samer, told Human Rights Watch how he and his wife fled their apartment in Baghdad's al-Baladiyyat neighborhood after armed men came to their building, shooting and demanding that Palestinians leave. Five days after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, he said, armed civilians stood in front of the main door, yelling that Palestinians had caused the war. "It's because of you!" they yelled. "Saddam gave you one million Euros and us nothing!"¹¹

Samer and his wife moved to an old school in al-Hurriyya neighborhood where many Palestinians lived. The next day, they were visited by civilian men with Kalashnikovs, grenades, revolvers and knives. "They came in the afternoon to the entrance of the refugee center, yelling `Get out!'" Samer said. "They came to each room. [They] were Shi'a."¹²

A man named Muhammed, who worked as a customs official, said he and his family had left their apartment in Baghdad's Ta'mim neighborhood around April 21, after ten days of shooting and threats. The apartment was in a government-owned compound of three large buildings known in the neighborhood as the "Palestinian buildings." Forty-five Palestinian refugee families lived there rent free. He told Human Rights Watch:

They were holding Kalashnikovs and they shot at the building. We were inside and they sometimes entered the building into the corridor. They were drunk... They were threatening us, saying they'll bring bombs. `We'll burn you,' they said. `We want you to leave. This is our country. You like Saddam and now he's gone.'¹³

After ten days of threats, Muhammed decided to move his wife, four children and one grandchild to the neighborhood of al-Baladiyyat, where many Palestinians live, but he soon decided to flee Iraq for Jordan. "There is no safety in Baghdad and I'm afraid for my daughters," he said from his tent in Jordan.¹⁴

Several of the Palestinian men in the neighborhoods of al-Baladiyyat and al-Hurriyya told Human Rights Watch that they were now armed and kept regular watch over their homes in shifts. One [name withheld] who was wounded in the shoulder in an exchange of fire during his shift in al-Hurriyya, said: "At the beginning they came to shoot in the air, just to scare us. They wanted to see how we would react, and whether we were armed. We are armed, we have to protect ourselves and our families. We are on watch duty all the time, day and night, on the lookout for any attackers."¹⁵ Another man, newly-married Ahmad Muhammad Sa'id, told Human Rights Watch: "We carry guns and other weapons left behind by the Iraqi army. We do that to protect ourselves and our families. Many people have died. I personally took part in the burying of bodies we found lying in the street. Because they were decomposing and smelling bad, we buried them near here."¹⁶ Most incidents appeared to have taken place late at night or in the early hours of the morning, but occasionally there are attacks during the day, such as having glass bottles thrown at homes inhabited by Palestinians. Sometimes they would receive advance warning of an impending attack from their Iraqi neighbors.

Expulsion of Palestinians from their Homes
Many of the Palestinian families interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that threats and harassment during rent disputes were the primary cause for their departure from Baghdad. Expulsions of Palestinian refugees from their homes began almost as soon as the war started. Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim, a sixty-two-year-old retired businessman, told Human Rights Watch how he lost the home he had been renting for twenty-two years:

The Iraqis took the opportunity of the war to get us out of our home. They came at the beginning of the war, the owners came with guns. They said, "Get out of our home-because there is no government, we need our homes. Now, we will put a bullet into each of your heads."-meaning me and the kids. "If you don't go, we will shoot you." So we thought, there is a war, so if they kill us no one will protect us. So we left and ran away. Not only us, but a lot of people. They kicked out anyone who is not Iraqi, their whole families. ... Once Saddam was gone, we had no-one to protect us.¹⁷

The family of Khairiyya Shafiq Ali also lost their government-provided rent-free apartment in Baghdad: "People came to our house four times, only Shi'a. They had machine guns and rifles, and came in groups of three to five each time. They said, `Either you leave your home or pay 300,000 dinars a month (about $150). They threatened they would empty their guns in our heads They started after the fall of the government, approximately a week after. ...They shot bullets at our house. They told us, `Saddam is gone, you are nothing here. You own nothing in Iraq, if you want to leave, take only your clothes."¹⁸

Jihad J., aged twenty-four, explained to Human Rights Watch how his family had moved into their rent-free home in the al-Tobji area of Baghdad during the 1980s. He described how his family had been evicted:

We were sitting in our home, two days after the fall of Saddam. At six p.m., five armed people came, armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. They were Iraqis. They broke down the door and entered. They told us to get out or they would kill us, and had their guns pointed at us. They were telling us to get out, that Iraq was their country. They insulted Saddam, saying he had tortured them because of us, and things like this. They gave us twenty-four hours to leave.¹⁹

A crane driver named Wisam A. explained how he, his wife and four children were forced to leave the house they had rented in the neighborhood of al-Khadra', where there are few Palestinians. Unlike many other Palestinians, he had paid substantial rent, 400,000 dinars per year (about $200), for his home.

Armed men surrounded his home three times, he said, each time shooting in the air and demanding the family leave. Each time he and his neighbor, a Shi'a, were able to scare off the armed men by firing automatic weapons into the air. After the third attack, on April 25, Wisam decided to leave.²⁰

Between April 9 and May 7, 344 families were either expelled from or were forced to leave their homes in Baghdad [comprising 1612 individuals], according to a list with names and addresses compiled by the Palestine Liberation Organization in Baghdad.²¹ Many of those evicted who did not flee to Jordan went instead to a makeshift relief center set up inside the Haifa Sports Club in al-Baladiyyat. As of May 7, 107 Palestinian families comprising 500 people were living in tents provided by the Iraqi Red Crescent on the football pitch of the sports club. ²² In the middle of the football pitch is what camp organizers believe to be an unexploded American mortar or missile lodged under the ground, and roped off from camp residents. Despite repeated promises, as of May 7, U.S. forces had not come to take the weapon away.

Those made homeless also included twenty-four families whose two apartment blocks in al-Baladiyyat had been destroyed during the U.S.-led bombing of Baghdad. The director of the sports club and physical education instructor, Qusay Rif'at, told Human Rights Watch that he and his colleagues at the club were expecting the number of expelled families to continue rising, and were attempting to make arrangements to accommodate them.²³ Some of those already expelled had been renting private homes from Iraqis, but they also included some families living in shelter accommodation or state-funded homes. They came from various neighborhoods in Baghdad.

A father of three, thirty-six year-old Saber Jamil Shahin, was obliged to leave his home in al-Mashtal on around April 21:

I was forced out of my home a week ago. We were living in a three-room apartment and we were comfortable. I was working as a boxing trainer at the Haifa Sports Club, but work stopped about a month ago and I haven't been paid. Our rent used to be 20,000 dinars a month. The landlord told me that starting next month the rent was going to be 100,000 dinars, which I cannot pay. He told others that he wanted to get rid of us. So I decided to leave before anything worse happened. We packed our belongings and our furniture and came here to the nursery [in al-Baladiyyat]. There are fifteen families living here now, each with a room. All of us share one toilet.²⁴

According to other families, they were given notice to leave their homes without the option of paying a higher rent. Some received notice to vacate their home in al-Baladiyyat within twenty-four hours, such as fifty-six year-old Musa `Abdul-Muttaleb and his family of five. He was also being accommodated at the nursery.²⁵ Others received two weeks' notice, including the family of Muhammad Ahmad Abdul-Jawad, who were living in an apartment in al-Habibiyya. Human Rights Watch met them at the relief center at the Haifa Sports Club, registering their names for tent accommodation. Muhammad's wife said:

Four days ago the owners of the apartment came and told us to get out. They gave us fifteen days to move out. Where are we going to go? My husband is retired and has diabetes. My divorced daughter and her child live with us. We have lived in our apartment for thirty years and have spent a lot of money on it. Am I to live in a tent now that I have grown old? I can put up with that, but what about my young daughter? She goes to college and has a child of her own. How can she live in a tent among strangers, and in front of passers-by?. Before we were given notice to leave, five men came to our building and asked us to leave. We chased them away. Some of them even try to occupy apartments damaged during the bombing. They come from other provinces, having heard that the Palestinians are moving out.²⁶

Twenty-seven-year-old Bassam Rizq, a Palestinian salesman from the Baghdad neighborhood of al-Baladiyyat, had been renting his apartment for the rate of 50,000 dinars per year (about $25). In June 2001, the owner of the apartment went to court to challenge the locked-in rental agreement, but lost. Four days after the fall of the Saddam Hussein government, the Shi'a owner arrived at the apartment with a group of armed relatives, and told Bassam to leave: "They gave me three days to leave. They said, either we will kill you, or we will take one of your children."²⁷

Bassam also lost his car, which he had registered in the name of an Iraqi friend, as Palestinians were not allowed to own cars in their own name. When the government collapsed, the friend appeared and took the car, telling Bassam, "sue me."²⁸ Bassam expressed the difficulty faced by many Palestinians from Baghdad: "I don't want to return to Baghdad. Where would I live or work?" ²⁹

Other Palestinians lost their homes in less violent ways, but their prospects for finding new housing is poor, given the general hostility to Palestinians in Baghdad. "Fatima," (not her real name) a forty-two-year-old resident of al-Jadida, described how she and many other families lived rent-free in a seven-apartment building for which the Iraqi government paid an annual rent of 20,000 dinar (about $10). When the government collapsed, the landlord demanded that all of the Palestinian residents leave the building, explaining he needed to get market-rate rents.³⁰

In talking to a group of some fifteen Palestinian men about their current predicament, the following views were expressed which reflected the feelings of many of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch:

We are afraid all the time. We have to keep watch over our houses night and day. We are waiting for something to happen and the longer we are here, the more likely it is that something will happen. Why should we wait? Frankly we don't want to stay here. We want to go to another country. We need urgent help from UNRWA [U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East]. It is true that when Saddam was here we felt safe, but we have not been living in the paradise some people imagine. Look at our homes. They are not fit for families to live in, and these are the better homes. We can show you far worse places where children are living next to raw sewage. In winter our homes become flooded knee deep because there is no drainage system. It is true that the Iraqi governments in the past forced Iraqis to rent us homes at very low prices, but that is not our fault. At the time, when Abdul-Karim Qassem³¹ was here, the rents we paid were five dinars a month. That was real money then, but it gradually lost its value and especially after 1991, with the sanctions and the economy suffering, that rent was meaningless. The Iraqi government did not raise these rents, and we can understand that the house owners feel resentful, but this is not the way to deal with the problem. Please find us a solution before something really serious happens.³²

Third Country Nationals
Human Rights Watch also interviewed other foreign nationals who fled the insecurity in Iraq. These foreign nationals were living in Jordan, in refugee Camp B near al-Ruweished. Predominantly single young men from Sudan and Somalia, they generally fled due to the prevailing situation of lawlessness. As single foreigners, they lacked the support network of family and friends that had protected many Iraqis.

Thirteen Somali men were forced from the Baghdad home where they all lived. "They came with guns and said `leave our country,'" said a Somali man named Salah A., aged thirty-five. The thirteen men left their house and set out for the bus station. On the Falluja highway, they were stopped by a group of armed Iraqis, two of the men said. The Iraqis forced the Somalis to line up on the road, saying they would be shot. At that moment, there was shooting down the road. The Iraqis turned in that direction and the Somalis, sensing their chance, quickly left. "We became safe from the danger," Salah remarked.³³

Another Somali, twenty-three-year-old Muhammad, was wounded in a U.S. coalition strike on Baghdad on April 9 and hospitalized with a shrapnel wound to the leg. When the government of Saddam Hussein collapsed in Baghdad, angry armed Shi'a civilians came to his hospital bed three times, asking how much money he had received from the Iraqi government, and threatened to kill him. Other Iraqis intervened, but when Muhammad's wound was healed, they advised him to leave Iraq because the situation was too dangerous for foreigners.³⁴

Iranian Kurds
On April 27, 2003, Human Rights Watch visited al-Tash Garrison, a UNHCR-administered refugee camp located some 145 kilometers west of Baghdad, on the outskirts of the town of al-Ramadi in the province of al-Anbar. Just prior to the U.S.-led air strikes on Iraq, the garrison was home to an estimated 13,000 men, women and children,³⁵ all of them Iranian Kurd refugees. After the fall of Baghdad some 1,136 people from the garrison fled towards the Jordanian border, where they are currently being housed in tents in the no-man's-land between Iraq and Jordan. Human Rights Watch did not have the opportunity to conduct research in the no-man's-land camp, whose population also includes some forty members of the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin e-Khalq, and approximately forty Iraqis. Based on interviews with humanitarian organizations active in the zone and UNHCR, as well as research in Baghdad, a general picture has emerged.

At the al-Tash refugee camp, Human Rights Watch spoke to scores of the residents, most of whom had been living there since 1982 or were born there. Of these, the majority were civilians living in border areas in Iran occupied by Iraq during the first year of the Iran-Iraq war, including Qasr-e-Shirin. They were displaced and brought by the Iraqi authorities to al-Tash. Other camp residents are members of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, principally the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), and had fled because of continuing crackdowns on opposition activity in Iran.

One spokesperson for the camp residents and a KDPI member, Abdullah Hassan Zadeh, told Human Rights Watch: "We are refugees in name but in reality we are hostages. The Iraqis took us from our homes and brought us here. We have been in this camp for twenty-three years and no one has come to see us before."³⁶ He went on to say that since the end of the war, the refugees in the camp have been very apprehensive about their security and welfare, given that there was no state control over law and order. Abdullah continued:

Since this war ended, we have been afraid of armed gangs who come from other provinces to loot. The tribes in this area are also armed.³⁷ Both during and since the war, we have received verbal messages like "We are coming for you." The tribes here do not attack us but there are armed gangs. We went to some of the tribal leaders to ask for their help in protecting us. They said they would do what was in their power. The Iraqi police who used to guard this camp told us, after Baghdad was surrounded, that armed looters would be coming for us. Over the past two weeks, about 1,000 families have left the camp for Jordan. Today seven families left. There is no official authority left to secure our situation here. We are afraid for the safety of our families, and we are also afraid that we will be forgotten and end up staying here for another ten years.³⁸

Several of the men interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they had bought AK-47s, handguns and other weapons on the black market for protection, and that they kept regular watch over the camp. One of them [name withheld] said:

A few days after the fall of Baghdad I saw about twenty armed men with their faces covered. They had come to steal the medicines from the camp clinic. We tried to confront them but they threatened us with their weapons and told us to go away. We had anticipated this and had moved the medicines and equipment and hid them in one of the houses. At that point we formed a committee to manage the affairs of the camp. UNHCR had left at the beginning of March. Two members of our committee went to the tribal leaders to ask for help.³⁹

Many of the camp residents also expressed concern about their personal safety if they traveled outside the camp, namely to the town of al-Ramadi to buy goods. They said their fears were based on incidents in the past in which a number of the young men living in the camp had gone missing or were found dead. One twenty-one year old resident who was born in al-Tash, Anwar `Abdul-Rahman Muhammad, told Human Rights Watch: "Some people from the camp have disappeared. For example, there was Muhammad `Ali Mirza, who has been missing since 1996. He was about thirty-five years old. He went out of the camp one day to buy some goods and never came back. There was also Mukhtar Hussain, aged twenty-one. His body was found near the camp and he had been killed."⁴⁰ The residents said these incidents had taken place when the Iraqi government had the law and order situation under control, and feared that because there was no official authority left, such incidents might recur or become more frequent.

Fears over the security situation was the major reason cited by most refugees for their flight out of al-Tash camp. However, they also expressed concern about their economic situation and their dwindling food and water supplies. They told Human Rights Watch that they used to receive twenty-five dinars per person from the Iraqi government, but that since 1991, the general decline in the economy had made this sum worthless. Consequently, they generated income by buying goods in al-Ramadi and selling them on the black market, and that this economic activity was no longer possible since many of the refugees felt unsafe to leave the camp. A member of the camp committee, Muhammad Reza'i, told Human Rights Watch that a delegation representing the refugees had gone to Baghdad on April 22 to seek help from the ICRC, principally because of the dire humanitarian situation in the camp. He said that their food supplies were running out and they had no medical staff to run the clinic:

The camp clinic used to be run by the Iraqi Ministry of Health. Now we have no doctors or medical staff. Some of the families here have opened up local pharmacies. They buy and sell medicines and serve the camp residents but without being medically qualified. Our children have various illnesses, especially asthma and diarrhea... For the past four years, WFP has been distributing food in the camp but we have very few provisions left. Just days before the war the government gave us six months' worth of flour. We have neither water nor electricity. In the days of the government we had three hours of electricity per day, and one hour of running water every fifteen days. Now we have no running water at all. We have dug wells but the water is salty. We use that to wash ourselves and our clothes. Our drinking water is what we had in the tanks before the war, and we are trying to use it very sparingly.⁴¹

While Human Rights Watch was at al-Tash, military personnel from the U.S. Army's Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, based in al-Ramadi, arrived at the camp. They said they had been charged with making an assessment of the needs of the residents, and discussed with camp representatives matters relating to basic services, including water, electricity, medical needs and security issues.

As for the future, the camp residents called for a durable solution to their plight. According to their spokespersons, the majority of the refugees wanted to return to Iran, particularly those civilians who had been displaced during the Iran-Iraq war. They said many had returned through illegal means between 1996 and 1999, mainly through paying Iraqi Intelligence (Mukhabarat) personnel 300,000 dinars per family in return for being smuggled into Iran. Those among them who were politically active in opposition groups said they wanted to be resettled in other countries. Since 1991, when the camp's population numbered some 30,000, an estimated 4,000 people were resettled in other countries through the UNHCR. A number of refugees in al-Tash told Human Rights Watch that they had been accepted for resettlement in Canada, Australia and other countries, but that Iraqi intelligence personnel prevented their departure unless they were paid large sums of money.

Responsibility to Protect Refugees and other Foreigners in Iraq
The former government of Iraq, as the authority in power, was responsible⁴² for preventing and punishing human rights abuses committed against all people within its territory - including refugees and other non-nationals.⁴³ Now that the Iraqi government has fallen, the obligation to protect refugees and other foreigners in Iraq from human rights abuse passes to the United States and its allies, as occupying powers under the Fourth Geneva Convention.⁴⁴

Military commanders on the spot must prevent and where necessary suppress serious violations involving the local population under their control or subject to their authority. The occupying force is responsible for protecting the population from violence by third parties, such as newly formed armed groups or forces of the former regime.⁴⁵

Ensuring local security includes protecting persons, including refugees and other foreigners, minority groups, and former government officials, from reprisals and revenge attacks. Unless the forces of the occupying powers are facing hostilities, the use of force is governed by international standards for law enforcement. That is, only absolutely necessary force may be used and only to the required extent, in accordance with the principle of proportionality.⁴⁶

The occupying power should prevent third parties from attacking or forcibly displacing civilians, especially particularly vulnerable groups such as the 128,000 refugees who were living in Iraq just prior to the war. All women, including refugees, should be protected against any attack, in particular rape. Child refugees must also be afforded appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance. All civilians inside Iraq must be treated with the same consideration by the occupying powers without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on national origin, race, religion or political opinion. Finally, the occupying powers must ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches all civilian populations in need, including foreigners or refugees.⁴⁷
Iraq's civilian population has pressing humanitarian needs. Even before the war, 60 percent of the Iraqi population was dependent on monthly food distributions from the central government. Medical care has been further constrained by the fighting and looting of the past month. A shortage of clean water supplies has the potential to spread water-borne disease, including diseases like diarrhoea and cholera that can quickly devastate populations with large numbers of poorly nourished children. As documented in this report, refugees and other non-nationals have been particularly affected by these shortages.

As the occupying power, the coalition is responsible for ensuring that food and medical care is available to the population under its control, facilitating assistance by relief agencies, and ensuring and maintaining public health and hygiene. The United States and its allies must provide humanitarian personnel with safe and unimpeded access to populations in need, and allow humanitarian agencies to operate independently from any military or political authority. Where the military directly provides humanitarian assistance, this should be distinguished clearly from the efforts of humanitarian agencies, so as to avoid confusion about the latter's neutrality.

⁴ United Nations Department of Public Information, "Update," April 30, 2003.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Human Rights Watch interview with Nazima Sulaiman, al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 27, 2003.

⁷ Human Rights Watch interview with `Imad al-Din `Abdul-Ghani Muhammad at his home in al-Hurriyya, Baghdad, April 29, 2003. He also told Human Rights Watch that several days after the incident, "some people came and said they wanted to move into the house, even though it was completely wrecked. We told them that there was an unexploded bomb in the house, so they got scared and left. I picked up the bomb and placed it on the roof of the building. I didn't know what else to do with it. There are still families living on the lower floor. They know there's a bomb there but they have nowhere else to go. About ten days ago we decided to talk to some Americans to tell them about the bomb so they could come and remove it. We tried to see someone senior but it was difficult. Finally we spoke to one of the soldiers stationed nearby. He spoke on his telephone to someone and then told us they would come and look at the bomb within five days. We wanted them to come straight away but they wouldn't. Maybe they thought it was a trap or an ambush. Anyway no one has come. It has been ten days since we told them about it, and the bomb is still there."

⁸ Human Rights Watch interview with Murtadha M. (last name withheld), refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 28, 2003.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Human Rights Watch interview with Ibitsam Yahya al-Assad, refugee camp outside of al-Ruweished, Jordan, June 27, 2003.

¹¹ Human Rights Watch interview with Samer (last name withheld), refugee camp outside of al-Ruweished, Jordan, June 27, 2003.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Human Rights Watch interview with Muhammad (last name withheld), refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 28, 2003.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ Human Rights Watch interview with a Palestinian man [name withheld], al-Baladiyyat nursery, Baghdad, April 28, 2003.

¹⁶ Human Rights Watch interview with Ahmad Muhammad Sa'id, al-Baladiyyat nursery, Baghdad, April 28, 2003.

¹⁷ Human Rights Watch interview with Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim, refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 27, 2003.

¹⁸ Human Rights Watch interview with Khairiyya Shafiq Ali, refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 27, 2003.

¹⁹ Human Rights Watch interview with Jihad J., refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 27, 2003.

²⁰ Human Rights Watch interview with Wisam A., refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 28, 2003.

²¹ Palestine Liberation Organization, Public Committee, Committee of Relief and Funds, "The Families Evicted From Their Homes," May 7, 2003.

²² Human Rights Watch interviews with `Abdul-Salam Yusuf `Uthman, Haifa Sports Club, al-Baladiyyat, Baghdad, April 28, 29, and May 7.

²³ Human Rights Watch interview with Qusay Rif'at, Haifa Sports Club, al-Baladiyyat, Baghdad, April 28, 2003. He also provided Human Rights Watch with information he had recorded of fatalities and injuries among Palestinians in several neighborhoods during the war, most of which he attributed to sniper fire and cluster bombs.

²⁴ Human Rights Watch interview with Saber Jamil Shahin, al-Baladiyyat nursery, Baghdad, April 28, 2003.

²⁵ Human Rights Watch interview with Musa `Abdul-Muttaleb, al-Baladiyyat nursery, Baghdad, April 28, 2003.

²⁶ Human Rights Watch interview with Muhammad Ahmad `Abdul-Jawad and family, Haifa Sports Club, al-Baladiyyat, Baghdad, April 29, 2003.

²⁷ Human Rights Watch interview with Bassam Rizq, refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, Jordan, April 27, 2003.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Human Rights Watch interview, refugee camp outside al-Ruweished, April 28, 2003. Name withheld on request of the witness.

³¹ Prime Minsiter of Iraq between 1958-1963.

³² Human Rights Watch discussion with a group of Palestinian men at a state-funded shelter, al-Hurriyya, Baghdad, April 29, 2003.

³³ Human Rights Watch interview with Salah A. and Oskar M., April 28, 2003, Camp B outside al-Ruweished, Jordan.

³⁴ Human Rights Watch interview with Muhammad (last name withheld), June 28, 2003, Camp B outside al-Ruweished, Jordan.

³⁵ Comprising some 2,300 families, according to the camp residents.

³⁶ Human Rights Watch interview with `Abdullah Hassan Zadeh, al-Tash Garrison, Iraq, April 27, 2003.

³⁷ The principal Arab tribe in the province of al-Anbar is the Dulaim. Other tribes are also present in smaller numbers, including al-Jubbur, al-Shummar, al-`Ubaidat and al-Hamdan.

³⁸ Human Rights Watch interview with `Abdullah Hassan Zadeh, al-Tash Garrison, Iraq, April 27, 2003.

³⁹ Human Rights Watch interview with an Iranian Kurd [name withheld], al-Tash Garrison, Iraq, April 27, 2003.

⁴⁰ Human Rights Watch interview with Anwar `Abdul-Rahman Muhammad, al-Tash Garrison, Iraq, April 27, 2003.

⁴¹ Human Rights Watch interview with Muhammad Reza'i, al-Tash Garrison, Iraq, April 27, 2003.

⁴² State responsibility under international law is linked to each state's sovereign right to exercise its jurisdiction. See e.g. The Case of the S.S. Lotus, P.C.I.J. Ser. A. No. 10, 1927.

⁴³ See e.g. Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions, P.C.I.J. Ser. A. No. 2, 1924.

⁴⁴ Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907), art. 43 (the occupying power "shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety.").

⁴⁵ Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) (Fourth Geneva Convention), arts. 29, 47 (art. 29: "The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons [civilians] may be is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents...").

⁴⁶ See, e.g. U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Havana, 27 August to 7 September 1990, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.144/28/Rev.1 at 112 (1990).

⁴⁷ See Fourth Geneva Convention, art. 55 ("To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.").