International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2024: Jamila’s Story

It was 1991 and Jamila was nine years old. When a mine exploded, she suffered injuries all over her body, with the most serious affecting her right leg.

Jamila is a patient at our Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration Centre in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Here, we provide prostheses, physiotherapy and check-ups to help people like Jamila. To facilitate community reintegration, we have also launched a financial programme to support accessible business ventures.

We met Jamila at the Surgical Centre for War Victims we ran in Sulaymaniyah until 2005, now managed by the local health authorities.
After the amputation of her right leg, our colleagues helped her begin the long rehabilitation process.

“For over 20 years, EMERGENCY has been guaranteeing me new, customised prostheses, check-ups and free physiotherapy sessions. I met my husband here in this Centre, who was also a patient.”

Despite the everyday challenges, Jamila now teaches in a kindergarten.

For us, this story represents EMERGENCY’s commitment to go beyond just treatment. It’s more than healing someone’s body after the violence of war. It’s helping them regain a place in their community.

People like Jamila, who was injured by an antipersonnel mine as a child, are the victims of war and the explosive legacy it leaves behind.

For 30 years, we have seen that victims are the only truth of war.
That is why we reject war, always, and work to support people affected by it.