Dutch donate EUR 3.5m to Iraq
31 March 2003
AMSTERDAM — The Dutch section of the United Nations Children's Fund and the government in The Hague have donated EUR 3.5 million to fund aid to children in war-torn Iraq.
The Dutch director of Unicef Iraq, Carel de Rooy, has welcomed the funding. "The more money we get, the more we can do," she said.
De Rooy is touring 11 European cities to draw attention to the plight of children in Iraq and she arrived in the Netherlands on Monday for a lightening visit.
A Unicef team is waiting in Kuwait to bring water-purification equipment and 40 trucks of water to Southern Iraq.
Unicef has 200 officials already in Iraq and 50 others, including de Rooy, have been stationed in neighbouring countries since leaving Iraq at the start of the war.
Even before the start of the war, a quarter of all children in Iraq were under-nourished and Iraq had one of the highest rate of child mortality in the world.
De Rooy said the bombing of Baghdad was making it very difficult for Unicef to do its work in the Iraqi capital.
[© Novum Nieuws 2003] |
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