ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Approximately 200,000 Yazidis remain in the Kurdistan Region due to instability in their hometown of Shingal amid preparations for a significant census in the country. Kurdish officials have outlined ways to be registered in their hometown.
Hussein Qaidi, head of the office for rescuing abducted Yazidis, told Rudaw on Sunday that nearly 360,000 Yazidis were displaced from their hometown of Shingal (Sinjar) to 21 camps in the Kurdistan Region following the Islamic State (ISIS) attack in 2014, noting that around 200,000 of them have yet to return to their homes.
“Their return is difficult because the situation in Shingal is not stable,” Qaidi elaborated.
The Iraqi government has encouraged Yazidis to return to their homes and offered them incentives but lack of basic services and security has hindered the process.
Guhdar Mohammed Ali, head of the technical and field division of the Kurdistan Region’s census team, told Rudaw that families from Kirkuk, Shingal, or other areas now residing in the Kurdistan Region can have one family member return to their hometown to register the rest if they present the family’s ration food form and national identification cards to the enumerator.
“A Yazidi from Shingal who resides in Erbil will be registered in Erbil, but the form will only indicate that he was originally born in Shingal,” Ali said.
He stressed that the “right thing to do is for the whole family members to return to their cities if they have the opportunity.”
The census will be conducted nationwide on November 20 and 21, during which a curfew will be imposed to facilitate a full count. The process has raised concerns among some Kurdish officials about how suspected demographic shifts in disputed areas will be reflected in the count.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Thursday declared a week-long public holiday to enable its civil servants and students, who are original residents of the disputed areas, such as the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, to return to their cities in order to participate in a crucial nationwide population census which is vital for the future of these territories.
Kurds have been forced out of oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed areas through Baathist-era Arabization processes and the events of October 17, 2017, when Iraqi federal forces took control of Kirkuk and the disputed areas from Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
A census could contribute to the resolution of many problems like Baathist-era Arabization, the status of the disputed Kirkuk province, and the KRG’s share of the federal budget.
In a bid to address the Kurdish concerns, earlier this month the Iraqi government approved a KRG request to conduct the census based on residents’ place of origin rather than their current place of residence, using information from the Iraqi migration ministry and the 1957 census for reference in the disputed areas. The census will also not gather information on ethnicity.
Iraq last conducted a census in 1997, excluding the provinces of the Kurdistan Region. The last census involving the Kurdistan Region was in 1987.
Estimates now put Iraq’s population around 50 million. A census planned for 2020 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iraq commenced its first phase in September by surveying and counting buildings.
Soran Hussein and Malik Mohammed contributed to this report.
