IRAQ: Camp in northern Iraq struggles to cope with the influx of Syrian refugees, currently more than 5,000 people are crossing the border from Syria every day

Record ID: 274427

  • Title: IRAQ: Camp in northern Iraq struggles to cope with the influx of Syrian refugees, currently more than 5,000 people are crossing the border from Syria every day
  • Date: 22nd August 2013
  • Summary: DOMIZ CAMP, NORTHERN IRAQ (AUGUST 21, 2013) (REUTERS) ***PART AUDIO AS INCOMING*** SYRIAN REFUGEES WALKING AMONG MAKESHIFT HOMES AT DOMIZ CAMP IN NORTHERN IRAQ TWO SYRIAN GIRLS CARRYING BUCKET FULL OF WATER SYRIAN BOY WITH WOMAN HANGING UP CLOTHES ON WASHING LINE MOTHER AND CHILD SITTING OUTSIDE TENT SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE NORWEGIAN REFUGEE COUNCIL (NRC), JAN EGELAND
  • Embargoed: 6th September 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Conflict,International Relations,Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVACPJQ3WCBTIVQTFNZND6NPTRSH
  • Story Text: The government of Iraqi Kurdistan has set an entry quota of 3,000 refugees a day to cope with an influx of Kurds fleeing the civil war in Syria, but there are signs many more are coming.
    Summer heat, overcrowding and lack of international relief are adding to the plight of some 50,000 Syrian refugees at Domiz camp in northern Iraq.
    Jan Egeland from aid organisation Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) on Wednesday (August 21) appealed for more international relief.
    "I think that Domiz camp here in Kurdish Iraq is one of the many examples of forgotten refugee camps in this vast, horrific, regional crisis, which is the Syrian exodus. More than four million have been displaced inside Syria. Two million people have become refugees. Here in Iraqish Kurdistan, 5,000 people come now every single day and there is not enough international relief."
    Egeland said there was little chance that Syrian refugees would be able to return home soon.
    "The refugees we spoke to today say that they have no expectations of safe return to their homes in Syria. They all believe they will have to resettle somehow and 5,000 new people come every day. So what we are doing now is not helping people home from this camp, we are helping create new camps for the many thousands of new people. This catastrophe needs a political solution urgently, but also it needs a lot more humanitarian assistance to people in a very desperate situation."
    About 35,000 refugees, believed to be mainly Syrian Kurds, have entered Iraq since last Thursday, including an estimated 5,100 on Tuesday (August 20) alone, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.
    NRC chief Egeland said the Domiz camp, 20 km southeast of the Iraqi northern city of Duhouk, has now doubled in size from the 25,000 people it was built to hold, describing it as an example of the enormous, overcrowding in a poorly funded and poorly cared for humanitarian catastrophe.
    The Kurdish regional government shut the frontier months ago, but opened it on August 15, triggering the mass influx.
    North of the camp, at the Sahela border crossing, thousands of Syrian refugees have been streaming into northern Iraq moving in a wave of people loaded down with their belongings. Some of them said they have been waiting for many hours at the border crossing.
    "I came here in the morning. We left our home at 6 am and we came to the border. From the border we came here. We were here in the morning, and now it is around 3pm. We fled our country but we did not want to leave our country. We left behind sweet memories in Syria in the hope that we will return one day. We are forced to come to Kurdistan," said a young Syrian woman as she waited with her family at the border crossing area.
    Another woman said her wish was to be able to return home.
    "My wish is to return to our homes. Other peoples' homes can not be ours."
    Kurds have become one of the warring parties in Syria since the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad splintered on sectarian and ethnic lines, with rival rebel groups turning on each other as they try to grab control of territory.
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