The Iraq Solidarity Campaign is appealing to the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, to help provide leadership and perspective in response to the recent statement by the “anti-corruption” committee, which on Saturday announced that there are an estimated five million child orphans now living in Iraq.

Whilst the statement has been ignored by the media in most countries, both members and supporters of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign believe that the future of our country’s children cannot be determined by ignorance and their welfare cannot be left until a decision is finally reached by the so-called “international community”.

Over this past year alone, we have helped to bring to the international publics attention, the plight being faced by our men, women and children alike, and have helped to bring into perspective, the damage caused to peoples welfare as a result of the occupation.

We are concerned though, that the five million child orphans could potentially be lost to a system of crime, drugs, poverty and prostitution, which would damage them greater into adulthood and compromise a young persons ability in forming adult relationships and raising their own children.

For people who know Iraq, they are fully aware of the facts that the occupation has brought our children illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty and trauma, in an act of aggression which has, in reality, continued since the sanctions policy of the 1990’s and similar to the systematic genocide of sanctions, the children of Iraq are once again being ignored by the worlds governments.

It is for these reasons, that the Iraq Solidarity Campaign are appealing to the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, to help take a lead and assist with bringing into effect an international call, which seeks to provide a focus on the five million orphaned children, so that Iraqis and concerned people alike, are able to mobilise on an international scale and provide these children with an international family network.

The damage which has been caused by the occupation, has meant that every ancient Iraqi tradition has witnessed a complete upheaval, traditions which we hold onto and practice within our own families but unless we act with speed and invoke a new generation of men and women, to have the courage, training and support to be mothers and fathers to these displaced children, we will lose five million of them to a life of even greater misery.