Northern Iraq, an area known as Iraqi Kurdistan, whose borders are not drawn on any map or atlas: they are drawn, instead, by an invisible and menacing thick line of land mines.

Iraqi Kurds living in this area live with 10 million land mines (most of them made in Italy) planted by Saddam Hussein during the war between Iraq and Iran, thus creating an invisible army that continues to kill.

In 1995, EMERGENCY refurbished and reopened a hospital in the village of Choman, on the border with Iran.

Sulaimaniya and in Erbil, two cities under the control of two different factions at war with each other: in 1996 and 1998 EMERGENCY opened two Surgical Centers to provide high quality free of charge medical assistance to the victims of war and land mines.

Both of these facilities were later fitted with specialized Burn and Spinal Units.

In 1998, in Sulaimaniya, EMERGENCY opened a Rehabilitation and Social Reintegration Center for amputees, which provides lower and upper limb prostheses, physical rehabilitation, vocational training and assistance in setting up professional cooperative workshops in their villages.

EMERGENCY created a network of 22 First Aid Posts throughout the country to guarantee fast treatment of patients and when necessary their transfer to a hospital.

In April 2005, having nurtured the program toward full autonomy, EMERGENCY completed transfer of management of the all Surgical Centers and First Aid Posts to local authorities.  These are now efficiently integrated in Iraq’s national health system.

Since 1995, EMERGENCY has treated more than 327,500 people in Iraq.