In 2017, a battle raged in Mosul, as Iraqi armed forces and their international supporters fought to dislodge Islamic State fighters from the city. Almost 2 million people—half of Mosul’s population--fled from the fighting. During the battle, over 9000 civilians were killed and more than 130,000 homes were destroyed or damaged. In the latest episode, we hear from the staff at one of the hospitals decimated by the fighting. Then we turn to our team in Mosul and ask: How do largely populated cities like Mosul, after so much destruction and human tragedy, carry on after the conflict ends?

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Following the end of the Islamic State Group’s caliphate in Mosul, Iraq in 2017, hundreds of women and children were detained in facilities throughout Iraq and Syria, and left in a state of limbo, not knowing when or if they would be released and repatriated into third-party countries. In this episode, we meet one family that has at least partly managed to leave detention and the war behind them to find a home in the Kyrgyz Republic with the help of their host community. We then speak to Elena Esanu, the ICRC’s deputy protection coordinator in Kyrgyzstan, to talk about how the ICRC is working in these host communities to build acceptance and help this family and others reintegrate into society. We ask Elena whether this family’s reintegration experience is a blueprint for other countries of origin to follow for families who remain stranded and separated.

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While media images showed the initial destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam leaving thousands of homes underwater and civilians without electricity or clean drinking water, it wasn’t able to show the unexploded ordnances lurking under the surface, affecting untold numbers of people. Today go to the Kherson Region, which has been heavily impacted unexploded ordnances, and hear from civilians and a Ukrainian Red Cross worker on the ground about how the contamination of landmines has frozen every day life. Then we turn to an interview with the Head of Weapons Contamination in Kyiv, Andy Duncan, to explain how this work is the very core of the ICRC’s mandate.

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Follow us on Twitter @ICRC_dc. You can also follow our team in Ukraine on X.com, formerly known as Twitter, @ICRC_UA to learn more about our work there.