Haitam Yousif is an IDP from Shingal living in Duhok. He said that he would only return home if forced to.
“If all the people return and no one is left here, we will have to return,” Yousif told Rudaw’s Haydar Doski on Sunday.
Approximately 1,300 displaced families have returned to Shingal since the beginning of the year.
“I came to the camp on January 1, 2015. Around 2017 and 2018, I became a shop owner. Thank god, my job is good,” said Mohammed Ismael, another IDP in Duhok.
There are more than 630,000 IDPs in the Kurdistan Region, and most of them reside outside of the 23 camps established across Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaimani provinces, according to data from the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Joint Crisis Coordination Center.
Last week, around 1,000 IDPs from Duhok province’s Sharia and Khanke camps returned to their hometown of Shingal in Nineveh province.
Iraq says there are over 30,000 IDPs from the southern and central provinces living in the Kurdistan Region’s camps. Baghdad has offered four million dinars to families who return to their homes by July 30 - the date the federal government will cease all aid for IDPs.
Despite the financial incentive, many families are reluctant to leave 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, unable to piece together the basics.
Camps in the Kurdistan Region suffer from a lack of funds. In December, a Sulaimani migration department official told Rudaw that residents of Arbat camp were moved to Ashti camp to save money after aid was cut off.
Human rights advocates have expressed concern about Iraq’s push to close the camps and said that all returns must be voluntary.
