ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Humanitarian aid to displaced persons sheltering at camps in Duhok province has seen a staggering 80 percent decline, an official said on Tuesday, blaming the federal government of Iraq for exacerbating the already dire conditions of the displaced.
"Assistance and support from aid organizations and the United Nations' agencies have dropped by 80 percent in the course of the past two years," Pir Dayan Jaafar, in charge of Duhok province's migration and displacement department, told Rudaw.
Many of the camps in the Kurdistan Region suffer from a lack of funds, as the humanitarian focus has shifted from emergency response to development and stabilization. Human rights advocates have expressed concern about Iraq’s push to close the camps, stressing that all returns must be safe, voluntary, and dignified.
Jaafar said the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has taken matters into its own hands, dealing with the burden of expenses and other responsibilities, including providing “basic services of education, electricity, and health; supplying drinking water; and disposing of trash which costs billions [of Iraqi dinars] every month.”
The official slammed the Iraqi government for "not being helpful" to alleviate the burden on the Kurdish government's shoulders.
Baghdad is "dealing with the question of the IDPs [Internally Displaced Persons] and the camps from a political point of view," he noted.
"Of 20 camps in the region [Duhok province], 14 of them are built on farming lands," he said, noting "the Iraqi government has not paid rents to the landowners ever since 2017, amounting to hundreds of billions of dinars."
Number of IDPs, refugees
The IDP camps shelter a total of 110,000 individuals (20,830 families). An additional 35,000 displaced families, an equivalent to 170,000 individuals, live outside the camps, said the official.
Speaking of the refugees, he explained nearly 10,000 families live inside the camps, numbering 50,000 individuals, while an additional 70,000 refugees live outside the camps.
The Iraqi government wants to close all the camps and has offered four million Iraqi dinars (about $3,050), a fridge, a stove, and a television to families who voluntarily return to their homes.
Despite the incentives, many families are reluctant to leave the camps because of continued 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 have been forced to return, unable to piece together the basics.
Ever since the territorial defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq in 2017, more than 10,000 families - around 55,000 individuals - have returned home, according to Jaafar.
"But over the past two years, 800 families have once again returned to the camps due to a lack of security, services, and job opportunities in their areas," the Kurdish official said.