ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Thousands of displaced families and Arab settlers in Kirkuk are yet to receive constitutionally agreed compensation for Ba’athist-era deployment due to shortage of payments in a dispute that has been ongoing since 2003, a local official told Rudaw on Thursday.
“More than 7,000 displaced people have completed their paperwork and are ready to receive compensation under Article 140,” Kakarash Siddiq, head of the Kirkuk office for the implementation of Article 140, told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir, adding that the applications of another 60 displaced families are still being prepared.
The backlog also includes nearly 3,000 applications from Arab settlers who were brought to Kirkuk to alter the area’s demographic makeup under the former Baathist regime. Saddiq further explained that the paperwork of these families is ready, but these applicants too are still waiting for the compensation intended to help them return to their areas of origin.
This process was due to be completed by December 31, 2007. However, due to a series of issues, the latest of which being a lack of funds, the process is incomplete.
Article 140 refers to Baghdad’s constitutional process of reversing dictator Saddam Hussein’s policy of Arabization in areas such as Kirkuk. These Baathist policies displaced thousands of local Kurdish and Turkmen people and altered the area’s demography. Article 140 resolved to give both displaced people as well as Arab settlers financial compensation after 2003.
According to Article 140, each displaced person is eligible for 10 million Iraqi dinars. Arab settlers are entitled to 20 million dinars each and a plot of land in their original areas in exchange for leaving Kirkuk.
Despite these arrangements, Siddiq said the Kirkuk office has not disbursed any compensation payments since the start of 2026 due to a lack of funds. He did not say when payments would resume.
The three-year Iraqi federal budget covering 2023, 2024, and 2025 had allocated 600 billion dinars to the committee responsible for implementing Article 140, divided into annual allocations of 200 billion dinars, according to Saddiq’s figures.
According to the KRG, none of the federal budget had been allocated to Article 140’s implementation in 2014, 2015, and from 2018- 2021.
The halt has left thousands of families waiting for payments under a constitutional process that was supposed to have been completed nearly two decades ago. The process of compensation has run into a series of issues for both Arab settlers and the displaced people.
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