INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS
AMAR HAS BEEN WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATIONS TO MAINTAIN STANDARDS OF INTERNATIONAL BEST PRACTICE IN OUR WORK FOR ALMOST 25 YEARS.
AMAR ensures that its projects adhere to the highest international professional standards. AMAR continues to conform to World Health Organisation (WHO) professional levels of service delivery across all health projects to achieve desired health outcomes. This includes providing holistic healthcare that enable people to receive services ranging from disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment and health education. Moreover AMAR ensures that all education projects delivered adhere to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) values and standards of professional practice, including promoting equal access to quality education, teacher training and curriculum development at all levels of education and a focus on teaching basic and vocational technical skills.
AMAR is also a member of The United Nations Global Compact. The UN Global Compact is a call to companies and NGOs everywhere to voluntarily align their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption, and to take actions in support of UN goals, including the Millennium Development Goals.
AMAR’s institutional project partners include or have included WHO, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNHCR, FAO, IOM, UNDP, and the World Bank on diverse projects including adult and child education, civic education, primary healthcare, reproductive healthcare, health training, community health education, support for farmers, and socio-demographic surveys. These relationships have been formalised under memoranda of understanding and letters of understanding which are regularly reviewed.
GOVERNMENT OF IRAQ
AMAR has an excellent relationship with the Government of Iraq and works closely with its ministries. Cooperation has been particularly strong with major ministries such as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. Staff participate in delivering and monitoring many of AMAR’s programmes. AMAR has conducted continuous training for ministry staff including medical capacity-building for front-line medical staff, and human rights training for local and national staff in the local ministry directorates for Education, Health, Youth and Sports, Communications and Mail. AMAR has also worked on projects with the local authorities.
DRL
Since 2012, AMAR U.S. has worked to promote the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor’s (DRL) central mission of freedom, democracy and human rights around the world through its initiatives focused on ending gender based violence. Through education workshops and legal support structures, AMAR has provided assistance to victims of gender based violence. In addition to a path to justice, AMAR teaches conflict management and peace building skills which are used to improve familial and community relations. AMAR’s programs accelerate progress on the issue of gender based violence, an issue which is so critical to the social and economic future of Iraq.
EIDHR
AMAR has worked with the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), part of EuropeAid, in Iraq since 2014 to reduce ongoing social, economic and political divisions as a consequence of discrimination on the grounds of religious belief (or non-belief). Funding from the EIDHR allows AMAR to train Community Leaders on human rights, religious tolerance, anti-discrimination and gender empowerment. AMAR also trains teachers and university Professors to deliver education on these issues to thousands of school pupils and university students, while working with corporate partners to train Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (UK GOVERNMENT)
AMAR has worked with the British Embassy in Iraq to enhance the space for, and quality of, political participation in Iraq. Between 2014 and 2015, AMAR trained teachers and community leaders working in 30 schools and communities across 6 governorates, reaching more than 3,600 pupils and their families with information about the importance of political participation and the means for them to engage in the democratic process. AMAR has continued to work closely with the Ministry of Education in order to implement this project and to have activities sustainably adopted in the long term.
LDS CHARITIES
AMAR U.S. has partnered with LDS Charities since 2012 to deliver lifesaving aid and training. Through a project on Neo-Natal Resuscitation Training, AMAR provided instruction to Iraqi medical practitioners on life saving resuscitation techniques which continue to be implemented throughout Iraq to save lives, even today. Later, Project Mobility HOPE addressed a need for wheel chairs for disabled Iraqis by providing $250,000 worth of Rough Rider wheel chairs for Iraqis desperately in need of improved mobility. Following the success of these initiatives and due to common goals and objectives, LDS Charities and AMAR U.S. signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2014 to further project collaboration.
THE SECRETARY’S OFFICE OF GLOBAL WOMEN’S ISSUES
From 2011-13, through the assistance of the Office of Global Women’s Issues, AMAR U.S. worked to combat violence against women and promote the full participation of women in the political, economic and civic life of Iraq. With a focus on women’s rights and creating tomorrow’s female leaders, the Leadership and Capacity Building in Iraq (LCB) program operated in Erbil, Dohuk, and Sulaymaniyah. Over 24,000 men, women, boys, and girls benefitted from receiving an education on rights awareness and violence prevention. All activities were conducted in close co-ordination with the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government ministries and officials, as well as local community and religious leaders.
UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (UNDP)
AMAR currently works with the UNDP in Iraq on two separate projects. The first centres on helping combat the threat from drug-resistant TB through the use of community health education events to raise awareness about the disease and screening activities aimed at identifying those with the disease and providing the appropriate treatment in Southern Iraq. Targeting TB, one of the fastest-growing health threats in the region, offers long term health benefits, especially in communities who have had little information or access to care for the disease.
The second project delivered with the UNDP centred on providing hundreds of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host community members in Northern Iraq with vocational skills. These centres empowered individuals with skills that they could utilise to develop small enterprises and provide for themselves and their families. The centres also provided recreational activities that provide a relaxing, therapeutic environment for IDPs and host community members to socialise, helping communities deal with the conflict and trauma they have experienced.
UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANISATION (UNESCO)
Over the past few years, AMAR’s partnership with UNESCO has enabled the teaching of thousands of children and illiterate young adults, as well as the promotion of human rights and cultural tolerance. This dramatically increases the opportunities available for beneficiaries, their families and their communities by helping to create a socially-conscious and skilled society for the future. Through the teaching of literacy and numeracy skills, many young adults have learned to express themselves through means other than conflict.
This work was recently further underpinned with a renewed MoU between AMAR and UNESCO ensuring that all education projects delivered by AMAR adhere to UNESCO’s values and standards of professional practice. This helps to support the constant delivery of high quality teaching. AMAR’s most recent project with UNESCO involved enrolling over 12,000 out-of-school children from Basra and Baghdad into formal accelerated learning programs, helping these children to become re-integrated in the national education system and improving their chances of employment and their capacity to live fulfilling lives.
UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND (UNFPA)
AMAR has worked with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Iraq since 2006 to improve the reproductive health of women in underprivileged communities. Project funding from UNFPA allows AMAR to train medical professionals at the primary healthcare level, health education volunteers and traditional birth attendants in order to provide antenatal, natal and postnatal support for remote communities in the Iraqi Marshlands.
WORLD BANK
AMAR’s partnership with the World Bank has centred on public healthcare in Iraq. The World Bank has previously provided funding to increase the capacity of Primary Healthcare Centres, mobile health clinics for rural communities, professional training for medical staff and an integrated Women Health Volunteer programme. Through this funding, preventative healthcare initiatives were developed based around high-quality health education in schools and the community, targeting long-term behavioural change. This is in accordance with the vision of the World Bank to create a stable and healthy Iraq which will help reduce poverty and support development.
WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION (WHO)
AMAR has a long-standing relationship with WHO dating back to the 1990s when AMAR and WHO first signed an MoU covering the values and standards of professional practice in a development context. Since this time, AMAR has maintained this important relationship through an LoU signed in 2008, and continues to look to WHO to ensure professional levels of service delivery across all AMAR health projects to achieve desired health outcomes.