Al-Falluja Council for Social Cohesion held a workshop with the Environment and Water Masar (path) to discuss the most important problems facing Al-Anbar governorate in terms of pollution of the environment and rivers, with the active participation of the members of Al-Fallujah Council and the Environment and Water Masar on 28 July, 2019.

The session included a discussion on environmental problems in the governorate, and the problems of the dams that Turkey is constructing were reviewed. The council members also discussed current problems, the most important one being the radioactive materials in the Euphrates river, which are transported from Basra to the Muthanna warehouses, as evidenced by the facts and documents of radiation treatment barrels.

After the end of the battles against “Daesh” and removal of danger from the areas under its control for more than 3 years, these regions are now facing a new danger no less potent, and which threatens the lives of its inhabitants: slow death due to radiation.

In the end, the members agreed to hold a session in the center of Anbar province to be attended by the local government, representatives of the Ministry of Science and Technology, academics from Anbar University, and representatives of civil society organizations and city dignitaries. They came out with a set of recommendations as follows:

• Hold a campaign on social media before the session to highlight the topic.
• Use of a hashtag that helps to convey the facts to regular citizens.
• Present a paper containing the problem, its causes and consequences, to be written by the local government.
• Present a paper from the Ministry of Science and Technology explaining the reasons for the transfer of the materials and what safety measures it has taken so as not to harm the residents of the governorate.

Al-Falluja Council for Social Cohesion works to form a coalition between civil society, communities and local authorities to address substantive issues and solutions with the Masarat of the Forums. It works in cooperation with the Information Center for Research and Development, Tammuz Organization, the Italian organization Un Ponte Per and Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative within the space of the Iraqi Social Forum and supported by the EU project “Youth of Mesopotamia for Democratic Governance and Peaceful Coexistence in Iraq”.

Mohammed Ibrahim

Fallujah Council for Social Cohesion