ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Around 800 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Salahaddin and Nineveh provinces residing in a camp in Sulaimani returned home on Saturday, the Iraqi migration and displaced ministry announced.
Migration and Displaced Minister Evan Faeq Jabro said that a total of 787 IDPs residing in Sulaimani’s Ashti camp were returned to their original places of residence in Salahaddin’s Yathrib district and Nineveh’s Yazidi-majority town of Shingal (Sinjar).
The returnees received a financial grant of four million dinars (about $2,670), as well as several household appliances including a TV, stove, and refrigerator, said the ministry.
Ashti is the last remaining IDP camp in Sulaimani as July 30 approaches - the date the Iraqi ministry will stop aid to displaced persons and close the camps.
“The number of families remaining in Ashti camp is approximately 370 families, and their return will be after their children finish taking the ministerial exams, so that Sulaimani province will be cleared of camps,” read the statement from the ministry.
Another group of more than 850 people were returned from the camp to Yathrib and Shingal in late May.
Earlier this month, rights monitor Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned against the planned closure of camps in the Kurdistan Region, stating that shutting down the camps will “imperil” the rights of many IDPs from Shingal.
“Sinjar [Shingal] remains unsafe and lacks adequate social services to ensure the economic, social, and cultural rights of thousands of displaced people who may soon be forced to return,” it said.
There are more than 630,000 IDPs in the Kurdistan Region, though most of them reside outside of the 23 camps established across Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaimani provinces, according to figures from the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Joint Crisis Coordination Center. The Kurdistan Region was hosting several million IDPs at the peak of the conflict with the Islamic State (ISIS).
Despite the financial incentives offered by the government, many IDPs are reluctant to return home because of continuing violence in their hometowns, a lack of reconstruction following the destruction of their homes, and little in the way of basic services. Some who voluntarily left the camps have been forced to return, because they could not secure the basic necessities in their hometowns.
