ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s minister for migration and the displaced met with a Kurdish delegation and UN representatives on Monday to discuss mechanisms for the return of internally displaced persons (IDP).
Iraqi Minister of Migration and Displacement Evan Faeq Jabro chaired a meeting with a delegation from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), UN bodies, and other relevant committees to discuss joint mechanisms to ensure the safe return of IDPs.
With the Iraqi government having closed most camps, Baghdad set July 30 as the deadline for the Kurdistan Region to close its camps. As the deadline approached, Erbil refused to forcibly close the camps. So, Iraq’s displacement minister filed a lawsuit against the KRG.
“[A]s a gesture of goodwill,” Jabro said, Baghdad “decided to halt the legal proceedings,” according to a statement published on the ministry’s Facebook page.
The minister added: “following the cooperation shown by the regional government in implementing the [federal] government’s plan to close the camps and fully resolve the displacement issue.”
Around 26,500 families, including 22,000 in Duhok, remained in the Kurdistan Region’s IDP camps, the Iraqi displacement ministry’s spokesperson told Rudaw in late July. All IDP camps in Sulaimani have been closed.
In its most recent report in April, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported there were 1,098,913 IDPs across the country, primarily in Duhok, Erbil, Nineveh, Kirkuk, and Sulaimani provinces. At the time, it had recorded 4,871,916 returnees.
Human rights advocates have expressed concern about the push to close the camps. If returns are not safe, voluntary, and dignified, they have warned of secondary displacement.
IOM, the UN’s primary organization for tracking displacement, reported that 83 percent of displaced persons “returned to the place they used to reside before the 2014-2017 crisis,” citing data it collected in Iraq from April 1 to June 6. Furthermore, 17 percent of the IDPs “did not return to their location of origin and are considered secondarily displaced IDPs,” according to IOM.
