COOPI’S Modus Operandi

CHILD PROTECTION RAPID ASSESSMENT Al Qayyarah Subdistrict DECEMBER 2018 I. BACKGROUND is the main town of Qayyarah subdistrict, one of the 5 (اﻟــــﻘـﯿـﺎرة :Location. Al Qayyarah (Arabic subdistricts in which the District of Mosul is divided. It lies 60 km south of the city of Mosul, in southern region of Nineveh Governorate, on the west bank of the Tigris river. )1 Population. With its population of approximately 23,000 people (around 4,000 households), Qayyarah is the second largest community in the Governorate, after the main metropolitan area of Mosul. A fourth of the population is concentrated in Qayyarah’s city center, while the remain- ing three quarters inhabits the surrounding villages. Livelihoods. Besides the oil industry, Al Qayyarah population’s main source of income was agriculture before the conflict and farmers grew various crops including wheat and watermelons. Impact of the conflict. The town and its sub-district fell under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in June 2014. In the summer of 2016, Coalition Forces heavily bombed the villages surrounding the center of Qayyarah to recapture the city. In August 2016, Qayyarah was fully recaptured by Iraqi forces, in what the PM Haider al-Abadi described as "a key step in the fight against ISIL". In fact, controlling Qayyarah was of strategic importance for the offensive to retake the main city of Mosul and the northern parts of the occupied districts. Damage to private and public buildings. During their advance, ISIL fighters burned and looted a number of government, police and army centres, levelling them to the ground using high ex- plosives. As they took possession of the city, they headquartered in all the large public spaces available such as the train station, the football stadium and the neighbouring Qayyarah Sec- ondary School. These locations were used for gatherings of militants, training sessions and public executions of citizens. For this reason, they were targeted by heavy airstrikes from Iraqi and Coalition Forces for months, along with a high number of private buildings, and thus completely destroyed and levelled to the ground. Damage to productive infrastructure and loss of incomes. Before leaving the town, ISIL burned down all the oil refineries and networks (Al Qayyarah was a main hub for the Iraqi oil industry) leaving them behind in flames, causing toxic smokes and deprivation. Lack of security, law and order and widespread displacement. The conflict had a devastating impact on people. The conflict did not only destroy homes, buildings, infrastructures and liveli- hood sources, depriving people of properties, services, facilities and incomes, but also created an overall lack of security, law and order and a very high rate of displacement. The process of re- construction that followed was slow and people have not gotten back to rebuilding their lives and a sense of normalcy as yet. Impact on the education sector. The impact of the conflict on the education sector was devastating. First of all, most school buildings were damaged and deprived of WASH facilities. This fact alone already put out of schools thousands of children in the district or made their attendance very difficult or unsafe. Existing schools are hosting two-three times the number of children their spaces would allow with overcrowded classes and schools working double shifts becoming the normalcy. )2 School furniture, stationery, educational and recreational materials are still lacking. Most schools lack funds to pay for their own teachers’ salaries and teachers are volunteering their time in the hope that the Department of Education will one day hire and pay them fully. Many children are still denied access to school because of many reasons such as lack of security, lack of funds to pay for the school uniform, books and materials, child labour or presence of landmines on the way to school, while children with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), other permanent or temporary disability or trauma caused by the conflict are unable to receive adequate care and are unable to attend classes for this reason. II. OBJECTIVE OF THE ASSESSMENT Mainstreaming protection concerns across the country programme is a distinctive feature of COOPI’s modus operandi. This is true in Iraq too and particularly in the education in emergency (EiE) sector, in which COOPI has been investing since the beginning of its operations in the country. To operationalise the adoption of an integrated approach between education and protection, in December 2018 COOPI conducted a Protection Rapid Assessment in Qayyarah. The overall purpose of the assessment was to identify immediate protection risks and gaps for children and their families so as to inform further programming in the EiE sector in the area of Qayyarah, an area where COOPI is collaborating with 10 schools already. III. METHODOLOGY Research tools. COOPI protection staff in collaboration with the staff of local partner Afkar un- dertook the assessment using three main research tools. First, they held Focus Groups Discus- sions (FGDs) with parents (groups were separated by gender to ensure freer expression). Then they held interviews with key informants (KII) such as teachers and headmasters in order to cap- ture in depth insights from the most knowledgeable community representatives and triangulate the information provided by parents. Finally, they mapped children’s activities involving the interaction with groups of children describing their daily activities and indicating possible areas of protection concern for themselves and their families. The three tools were translated and adapted from the Child Protection Assessment and the COOPI Rapid Assessment Toolkits. Team preparation. COOPI protection team prepared the questionnaires in Arabic, tested them in one of the target schools before using them at full scale. The COOPI Global Protection Advisor trained the local protection team before hand; these in turn trained the local partner’s staff to ensure the most appropriate language and standards were applied throughout the interactions with )3 the interviewed. All enumerators, discussion facilitators and note takers were made aware of the appropriate referral pathways in case individual cases were brought to the their attention during their field work. Selection criteria. The criteria for selection of the schools involved previous or current COOPI´ s presence in the area and population density of the communities they are serving. Informed consent. All caregivers and parents provided informed consent statements as to the assessment, its process and purpose and the assessment team’s interaction with their children who also provided verbal assent to their participation. Assessment participants. In total the team interviewed: 67 children including 7 boys and 10 girls aged between 6 and 12 years; 9 boys and 27 girls aged between 12 and 14 years and 14 boys who were above 14 years old; 83 parents (37 mothers and 46 fathers) and 28 teachers (11 women and 17 men). Number of schools involved. The assessment covered 5 schools of Al Qayyarah subdistrict ) including 31% of their teachers and 2% of their students. Limitations. The limitations of the methodology relate to the use of the purposive sampling method as not all schools could be covered. Nonetheless the assessment findings provide inter- esting insights on how to integrate tailored child protection measures in current EiE programming. IV. MAIN FINDINGS The section below highlights the main findings of the assessment organised in four subsections describing: a) main protection concerns, b) specific sources of stress, c) areas and spaces that are specially unsafe and d) current coping mechanisms and traditional protection systems. a) Main protection concerns Several were the specific protection issues highlighted by parents pointing out clearly to the long term consequences of the conflict and displacement on their families. )4 (i) Post traumatic stress disorder. More than half of the par- Children changed behaviour after ents stated that their families were strongly affected by the ISIS, they have bad dreams and conflict and children showed signs of post traumatic stress cannot forget the displacement” disorder (PTSD). Anxiety and psychosocial distress in general Parent during a FGD were observed by all parents, with children having nightmares at night and crying a lot during the day. (ii) Lack of security and the economic crisis. Over a third considered that the lack of security was the main factor that prevented them from offering a safe environment to their children, while another third considered the economic crisis responsible for it. (iii) Escalation of aggressive behaviour. Parents “Students sometimes have violent reac- pointed to the worrying escalation of violence within tions and behaviours because they are their own community and among children themselves very stressed and the classroom are over- as their main areas of concern. A fourth declared that crowded, more than 70 students in one children recur to an aggressive behaviour to solve con- class!” frontations and a third noticed an increase of tension Teacher during a KII among children. (iv) Violence as main interaction mean. Some parents declared that children repeated the same behavioural patterns observed in their communities, patterns which they witnessed during the conflict. Violence has thus become the main communication language children use to interact with their peers and this behaviour seems to concern boys more than girls. Indeed, boys seems to be the most disrespectful and aggressive toward each other. Teachers confirmed this finding. Half of them declared violence among students to be one of the main issues they face in their daily work. Schools do not always represent a safe environment as a result as children are aggressive with each other and a fourth of the parents declared that their child suffers from isolation and does not feel integrated at school and in the community because of it. (v) Girls’ protection.

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