In Dohuk in northern Iraq, she is known simply as "Professor Monika": Oldenburg educator Monika Ortmann is establishing a co-operation with the university there and has helped to initiate a special needs and rehabilitation education degree programme in Dohuk. In this interview, she talks about everyday life at the university, the plight of refugees and the endeavour to achieve inclusion in a country torn by war and terror.
QUESTION: Ms Ortmann, you are establishing a co-operation with the University of Dohuk in northern Iraq. How can you help in Iraq and, conversely, what can be transferred to your work here in Germany?
ORTMANN: I see myself not so much as an aid worker, but as a scientist who works together with the Iraqi and Kurdish scientists on a common cause. The fact that this may also result in help is probably due to my specialism, education for people with physical and motor impairments. There are a lot of people in Iraq who have such impairments because of the three wars in the last 30 years. The supply situation is of course also extremely poor due to these wars and the current IS terror. Pregnant women and their offspring are not so well monitored medically, so there are a lot of disabilities - even outside of the fighting.
QUESTION: What was your original motivation for establishing contacts in Iraq?
ORTMANN: It started in 2009, when a colleague from Berlin asked me if I would like to give a lecture at a conference to which 40 Iraqi academics and politicians were also invited. My presentation on the pedagogical treatment of severely ill children was met with great interest, as many children in Iraq are permanently damaged by weapons remnants and chemicals lying around. It quickly became clear that Iraqi scientists were interested in co-operation. Two years later, I travelled to Baghdad, but in the end, co-operation with universities there could not be realised because the number of admissions was constantly increasing.
QUESTION: But then you somehow got hooked on Iraq...
ORTMANN: ... and we established contact with Dohuk University in Kurdistan. The director of the Institute for European Studies there has been in Germany for 20 years and is passionate about developing relations between Germany and Kurdistan. A programme run by the DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service, promotes contacts and academic co-operation with Iraqi universities. Iraq ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in March 2013, and I would like to provide academic support for the inclusion process there. Incidentally, I am Professor Monika at the University of Dohuk.
QUESTION: That's a nice way of addressing you.
ORTMANN: Everyone there, including the president of this university, which is much larger than ours, is only addressed by their first names. You get used to it (laughs). After a round trip at the end of 2013, I travelled to Dohuk with a doctoral student in spring 2014 exclusively to get to know the lecturers, to give lectures - in other words, to build relationships. This plays a completely different role in the Arab, Kurdish region than it does here. Sustainable relationships are very important, and working relationships can be built on them.
QUESTION: And the co-operation that the two universities concluded last June was based on this?
ORTMANN: Exactly. Firstly, there was a return visit by an Iraqi delegation, who got to know both our university and various practical facilities in the region. It was immensely important to show them the latter, you can't convey all facets of this in a lecture: what do we train our people for, where do they work later, how do we deal with children and young people with disabilities in Germany? We visited a number of facilities in the region - schools, workshops, rehabilitation centres...
QUESTION: What were the reactions?
ORTMANN: On the one hand, our visitors were very impressed, but they were also deeply moved, really taken away. What they saw took them to the edge of their emotional capacity: Disabled children are hidden away in Iraq, they are not seen there and are hardly ever confronted with them. This was a completely new experience for the delegation, especially as the majority of them were not fellow professionals. That can be overwhelming. At the same time, they were impressed by the opportunities and the quality of education here.
QUESTION: And the University of Dohuk then decided to create its own degree programme based on the Oldenburg model?
ORTMANN: Yes, 54 young people have been studying "Disability Studies and Rehabilitation" there since October. We met in Ankara beforehand to fine-tune the curriculum together - we first had to organise a conference like this in a safe third country. In the meantime, however, the DAAD has taken up the idea and recommends a similar approach to others. So we met in a small Turkish hotel, without a meeting room, without a flipchart or anything like that, but we improvised and made the best of it. Outside of mealtimes, we were able to work out the structure of the study in the restaurant. We also learned a lot in the process: in the first year, the students there learn Kurdish, Kurdish history, English and Computing Science - and that couldn't be changed in favour of special and rehabilitation education content. That is compulsory.
QUESTION: Wouldn't these basics have a place in school curricula?
ORTMANN: I said that too. But obviously, this is absolutely emphasised in the first year of study. English, for example, is also important. The academics there consider themselves to be about 30 years behind in their development, but are endeavouring to catch up with international standards. Until recently, there was no English-language literature on inclusion, education or psychology in the library - everything was in Kurdish or Arabic. They couldn't even imagine inclusion at first! We spent hours discussing how it could work.
QUESTION: What's the problem?
ORTMANN: The most basic things are missing there. In school, there is only frontal teaching. There's no mention of other forms of learning or differentiated learning. We have therefore used part of the DAAD funding to purchase standard English-language works for the Dohuk University Library in the hope that they will be used as widely as possible by lecturers and students there. Not all books can be ordered and delivered online so easily. When we travel there, we also have to take cash with us as we can't withdraw anything.
QUESTION: The areas controlled by IS - Mosul, for example - and the plight of the refugees are not far from Dohuk. To what extent is everyday university life, a regulated course of study, for example the degree programme you helped to design, possible at all?
ORTMANN: The degree programme is quite normal. My impression is that life and everyday life at the university are actually quite normal. However, I also visited refugee camps and other refugee accommodation during my last stay.
QUESTION: What were your impressions there?
ORTMANN: The situation is simply inhumane, and I can't understand how the international community can allow this to happen. No sanitary facilities, single-walled tarpaulins that are highly flammable. These people have nothing! And all those little children. It is quite simply a human catastrophe.
QUESTION: The Federal Foreign Office has issued a travel warning for the region and advises against non-essential travel. What does this mean for co-operation? Do you have a queasy feeling from time to time?
ORTMANN: Basically, I don't feel unsafe or uneasy. When I travelled very close to Mosul last November between Dohuk and Erbil, where you can practically peek over at a checkpoint, I did have a queasy feeling. But I thought to myself that I should have been scared in Dohuk. The people there live there every day, all the time. And they laugh there, they study there, they go to the canteen like we do here, and the children go to kindergarten. The only difference is that even as very young children they learn that they are not allowed to pick up weapon parts, mines or hand grenades, which is of course completely different from what they learn here.
QUESTION: The cooperation agreement also provides for student exchanges. To what extent is this even possible at the moment?
ORTMANN: Iraqi students in particular would like to come to Oldenburg, but there is currently less interest - certainly due to the security situation. An Oldenburg student recently flew there who had been trying for two years to get involved in refugee work and had already tried in vain to get an assignment in northern Iraq. In a preliminary discussion with our dean Manfred Wittrock, she reiterated her wish and that she was aware of the risks. We then planned the trip together in detail and she was able to stay with the family of a lecturer in Dohuk. She received a very warm welcome there and came back with positive impressions, but of course also depressed by the misery of the refugees there.
QUESTION: You would now like to alleviate some of the suffering with a new project. What is it all about?
ORTMANN: It's about short-term therapy for abused girls and women in Iraq, help on the ground, for which we have applied for funding from the Federal Foreign Office. I am in contact with two psychotherapists of Kurdish origin who work at the universities of Freiburg and Duisburg-Essen. One of them told me about "narrative exposure therapy", which he himself has already trialled in Uganda and Bosnia-Herzegovina - it is very successful and can be applied interculturally. In a nutshell, traumatised patients re-enact their life story with a therapist and process the violence and horror they have experienced. Other experts, including Manfred Wittrock, are now on board to get this type of short-term therapy off the ground and we have submitted a project outline.
QUESTION: What form will the help take?
ORTMANN: The aim is to provide further education for local women in order to be able to carry out this short-term therapy - psychologists, social workers, social pedagogues, possibly also teachers. Presumably over a period of three years. But we are still finalising the details and the local network.
QUESTION: What is your overall assessment of the situation: what do you think special education can do, especially in a country like Iraq with so many war-wounded people, so many traumatised people? What is the importance of your subject in a country where, as you said, disabled people are often hidden away?
ORTMANN: It is extremely important. Special and rehabilitation education works on two levels, the psychological and the physical level - in Iraq, however, affected children receive neither physiotherapy nor educational support. On the other hand, they also do not receive schooling. Even children who could develop educationally don't learn to read, write or do maths, they don't learn any cultural content, they can't participate in cultural life.
QUESTION: So this is basically the opposite of inclusion?
ORTMANN: You have to gradually soften the situation there. It's also about the attitudes of the population, which won't change through the new degree programme alone; the media and public relations work are also important. But when the people who are now being trained there start work, when there are facilities for children with disabilities, it will be a great relief for the families. In more ways than one.
QUESTION: What are you thinking about specifically?
ORTMANN: There are various facets to this: I no longer need to hide my child. My child is also valued by others. It is appreciated that it is learning something, it is looked after at school, perhaps even picked up and taken home again. This psychosocial relief helps to promote the health of the rest of the population, parents and siblings. If parents can also be proud of their child with a disability, it is a completely different situation for the family and their well-being than if you always have to be scrupulous about hiding the child. The aim is to enable the individual to lead a dignified, perhaps even independent life.
Interview: Deike Stolz
