... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
today. The workers are part of a United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
Development Program (UNDP) project to restore and rebuild private houses in the historic Old City in West Mosul.
The project falls under the Funding Facility for Stabilization (FFS) and is focused on the restoration of 12,000 to 15,000 damaged houses, located across 29 neighborhoods in the Old City area.
The Old City area in West Mosul has seen fierce battles between the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group and the Iraqi security forces supported by international coalition
s. Most of the houses and neighborhoods were either partly or fully destroyed.The UNDP has a limited budget. They specified a budget of $35 million for the entire rehabilitation process. Hugo de Vries, stabilization specialist at UNDP says the team carry out the minimum according to international shelter standards.
"We will not be able maybe to do all the floors of your house, but we will be able to do one, or two, or three bedrooms," he explains. "We always do water and sanitation. We always do the electrics, to make sure that a family can return with safety and dignity."
The priority is for the houses that the people are returning to.
The UNDP project also takes in to consideration the heritage architecture of the houses. It works in line with UNESCO and the heritage department of the Iraqi government to make sure that the buildings are restored according to their original architecture.
"We try to rehabilitate all the work to look as closely as possible to what it originally looked like," explains de Vries.
To do this, they look at specific details such as doors, gates, paint colors and type of plaster, matching it as much as possible to the original.
The UNDP has a small assessment team composed of 18 engineers. While assessment is ongoing in one neighborhood, work is being carried out in another.
Construction work has already begun in 7 out of the 29 neighborhoods, and it is expected to be completed by September or October 2019.