The first month of 2009 brought a relative calm that Iraq had not known for some time, despite fears that security might deteriorate owing to the provincial elections. Street life returned to something akin to normal. "Baghdad feels like it has emerged from several years of horrendous violence, but the lull is fragile and recent, and we don't know whether it will last," said an ICRC employee in Baghdad. Violent incidents did occur, however, mainly in Mosul and Kirkuk and in the Qandil area.

Even with improvements in the security situation, basic services such as water, electricity and medical care still cannot meet the needs of the population. Job opportunities are scarce and salaries are not enough to live on. For an average Iraqi earning around 70 US dollars per month, prices of goods are too high. In addition, such a person often has no access to health care. Many children, rather than go to school, try to support their families by walking between rows of cars to sell items such as cigarettes, fruit or sweets to drivers stuck in the capital's traffic jams.

During the month of January, the ICRC maintained its support for civilians by distributing emergency and winter items to people displaced by fighting or other violence in the Qandil mountains and in other governorates such as Babil, Najaf and Diyala.

Re-establishing family links remains a major focus of the work carried out by the ICRC in Iraq in cooperation with the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. Families who do not know what happened to their loved ones after their arrest or displacement often fear the worst. They are relieved when they receive a Red Cross message delivered by Iraqi Red Crescent volunteers.

"I will never forget the day I received a Red Cross message from my detained son, whom I thought was dead," said Umm Mohammed, a widow from Fallujah. "Now I know that my son is alive. He wrote me a message... I am now living in the hope of seeing him again."

In January the ICRC and the Iraqi Red Crescent renewed their yearly agreement to continue to provide this vital service. Around 150 Red Crescent volunteers and 50 ICRC staff are involved in tracing and restoring contact between separated family members inside Iraq, often in difficult security conditions. This network also operates in other countries with the help of other Red Cross and Red Crescent societies or the ICRC.

Winter in Iraq is known to be harsh and nights can be very cold. People displaced within the country as a result of armed conflict who live in makeshift camps or improvised accommodation find themselves in a precarious situation. To help them better cope with the difficult conditions, the ICRC:

• provided essential household items such as blankets, tarpaulins, tea pots and kettles for some 9,000 internally displaced people in Al-Rahma settlement (Najaf) and Saad military camp (Diyala governorate).

• supplied similar items to 15 local NGOs in Najaf and Babil governorates to be distributed to 5,700 needy people living there.

In the north, the ICRC distributed food and hygiene items to 840 people who had fled from Qaladiza and Qandil districts to Sangasar and Zharawa because of ongoing shelling in the area. The displaced people left behind all their belongings. The majority are now sharing crowded houses with relatives and friends, while a few families are renting very basic accommodation.

Every month, around 102,000 people without income benefit from food and hygiene assistance under an ICRC programme that started in summer 2008. Those receiving the aid are displaced people, mainly in the central governorates of Diyala, Ninawa, and Baghdad but also in Salahaddin, Babil, Sulaymaniya and Al Anbar.

In January some 10,000 farmers in Erbil, Dohuk, Sulaymaniya, Diyala, Ninawa and Kirkuk governorates received a second delivery of fertilizer, following an initial distribution last year of seed and fertilizer carried out by the ICRC in response to a severe drought affecting parts of northern and central Iraq.

The main purpose of ICRC visits to places of detention is to assess the treatment of detainees and conditions of confinement. ICRC expatriate staff talk to the detainees in groups or individually to hear what they have to say and take account of their situation. At the end of the visit, the ICRC shares its findings confidentially with the detaining authorities.

The ICRC distributed 6,500 blankets for detainees in Rusafa prison in Baghdad, 300 for those in Harithiya prison, also in the capital, and another 300 for detainees in Maaqal prison in Basrah. This distribution came in response to an urgent need identified by ICRC delegates on two previous visits that the authorities had not been able to meet quickly enough. The ICRC also distributed 40 litres of scabies-treatment materials in Harithiya prison.

• The ICRC visited 3,000 people held in two US/Multi-National Force-Iraq internment facilities located in Baghdad airport. ICRC delegates met with more than 200 detainees in private.
  
• On a visit to Fort Suse federal prison in northern Iraq during the last week of January, the ICRC assessed the health condition of the detainees.
  
• ICRC delegates visited 10 detention facilities under the authority of the Kurdish regional government in Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniya. On these visits the delegates met about 50 detainees individually and paid particular attention to the issue of detainee access to health-care services.
  
• On 17 January, the ICRC facilitated the repatriation of a Jordanian national after his release from a US detention place. The ICRC offers its repatriation services to foreigners detained in Iraq who request them. Repatriations take place after their release and with their full consent.

• The Iraqi Red Crescent and the ICRC work together to distribute "detention certificates." These are issued by the ICRC to detainees visited and registered by ICRC expatriate staff. The certificates enable detainees or their families to qualify for social welfare or to explain their absence from school or work.

Iraq's weak infrastructure adds to the daily burden of the civilian population. Access to clean water and to health care remains the main concern for most Iraqis.

In January, the ICRC:

• provided equipment for emergency rooms in five primary health-care centres in the governorates of Diwaniya, Diyala, Kirkuk, Muthana and Ninawa. The equipment included patient trolleys, wheelchairs, defibrillators, nebulizers, suction machines and operating lamps.

• delivered an emergency health kit containing first-aid and basic medications for 5,000 people to the primary health-care centre in Faedah camp for refugees and other displaced people in Dohuk governorate. Around 12,000 people live in the camp and have constant needs in terms of health care, basic hygiene, water and sanitation. The Faedah primary health-care centre provides treatment for around 100 patients a day.

In hospitals and primary health-care centres, safe drinking water is just as essential as hygiene. The ICRC:

• installed small filters (1,000 litres/hour) in four hospitals in Baghdad to improve the quality of drinking water.
  
• upgraded the water system and repaired the incinerator in Al-Amriyah General Hospital in Anbar (capacity 100 beds, new water tanks of 50 and 100 cubic metres) and carried out repairs at the Hatmiyah primary health-care centre in Salaheddin, which can treat 40 patients a day.
  
• continued trucking water to Al Rashad Psychiatric Hospital. Water trucking to the hospital started in 2008 and has been maintained in order to provide patients with potable water until upgrades to the water system are finished.

• overhauled and cleaned the Baquba water boosting station serving around 30,000 inhabitants, and continued trucking water to around 5,000 displaced people in Baghdad, Al Anbar and Sulaymaniya.

As the promoter and guardian of international humanitarian law, the ICRC must encourage respect for the law. One way of doing this is through information sessions and workshops, which aim to remind weapon bearers of their obligation to spare persons not, or no longer, taking part in hostilities. Ensuring that soldiers and other fighters know and respect international humanitarian law minimizes the dangers to which people are exposed in any armed conflict. In January:

• the ICRC gave a two-day presentation on the basic principles of international humanitarian law to around 200 officer cadets in the military college of Zakho, in northern Iraq, in the Kurdish regional government area.
  
• around 40 senior and junior Peshmerga officers attended a similar presentation in Dohuk.

Knowledge and understanding among weapon bearers of the ICRC's neutral, independent and purely humanitarian activities is essential to the organization's security and for its access to victims of armed conflict. Accordingly, a presentation on the ICRC and its activities in Iraq was given to command staff of the Multi-National Division in Baghdad.