IRAQ: United Nations say lack of housing and job opportunities may be preventing Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people from returning home

Record ID: 783555

  • Title: IRAQ: United Nations say lack of housing and job opportunities may be preventing Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people from returning home
  • Date: 27th January 2011
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) U.N. HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES ANTONIO GUTERRES, SAYING: "I think the situation in the northern part of Iraq or in the southern part of Iraq had a dramatic improvement in the security, I do not see any problem for people to go back . There are hotspots still like baghdad or Mosul where we still witness some incidents, some of them quite serious. And so our position has been fairly clear that voluntary repatriation in safety and dignity being the best solution for all the refugees situations to force people against their will to the areas where insecurity still prevails in unacceptable." FAMILY STANDING OUTSIDE THEIR SHACK HOME AT CAMP MAN SMOKING AT CAMP GUTERRES FOLLOWED BY OFFICIALS, GUARDS ENTERING SHACK MAN AND WOMAN DRINKING TEA AT THEIR SACK AT CAMP OLD MAN AND OLD WOMAN ON WHEEL CHAIR SITTING IN SUN OUTSIDE SACK AT CAMP CLOSE OF WOMAN ON WHEEL CHAIR (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) RESIDENT OF CAMP THAER JASSIM, SAYING: "I don't have a house and I don't have money to pay rent. I am now a squatter like all the people who are here. I'm helpless. I can't do anything." GUTERRES AT HOUSE INSIDE CAMP GUTERRES, U.N. OFFICIAL AND GUARDS WALKING AT CAMP
  • Embargoed: 11th February 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq, Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: International Relations,Population
  • Reuters ID: LVA85NQ2162LMXJ8IPXM5JKLUYAB
  • Story Text: Insecurity is not the only thing keeping hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people from going home. A lack of housing and job opportunities also deter many, a senior U.N. official has said.
    Thousands of Iraqis are internally displaced within their own country and U.N High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said security isn't the only thing that is keeping people away, but a lack of housing and jobs.
    "A full integration of people in the social systems and in the public distribution systems that are very relevant in Iraq, and a response to the housing problem, I think a crucial element. Of course looking into the future, questions of jobs, opportunities are also very important, but, that's why we need a prioritised plan with clear targets,'' he said at the UNHCR's offices in Baghdad.
    ''But I do believe that doing that properly and with a strong support of the international community it will be more and more possible to bring people back home in safety and dignity,'' he added .
    OPEC member Iraq, which sits on some of the world's largest oil reserves, has seen one of the worst humanitarian crises in the Middle East since Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their homes after the creation of Israel in 1948, said the UNHCR.
    Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the country during the sectarian slaughter unleashed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and now live as refugees abroad, mainly in Syria and Jordan, while many more were driven out of their homes to other parts of Iraq.
    Guterres said he hopes Iraq's new government, led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, will be able to come up with a "comprehensive plan" to end the plight of Iraqi refugees and those internally displaced as Iraq moves ahead with major investment and rebuilding projects.
    Beyond security concerns, the government would need to provide displaced people and refugees with proper housing, health services, education, and property compensation, he said.
    "There are many things that need to be done, but I believe that conditions are being met for a true national priority, a true national action plan, to be designed and be implemented," said Guterres.
    "If we all engage, the Iraqi government and the international community, we can really look at the present situation as the beginning of the end of the Iraqi displacement crisis," he added.
    The U.N. envoy was unable to give exact figures for Iraqi refugees now but said around 196,000 were formally registered in neighbouring countries. The actual number of Iraqi refugees abroad is thought to be much higher, with an estimated 1.5 million Iraqis having fled Iraq after the 2003 U.S. led-invasion. Only 50,000 refugees have returned to Iraq, according to the the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees.
    Overall violence in Iraq has dropped sharply in the past years from the peak in 2006-07 of the sectarian carnage, but bombings and killings are still common. On Thursday (January 27) a car bomb exploded at a funeral wake in Baghdad killing at least 35 people.
    Most target Iraq's Muslim majority, but a series of attacks have also targeted minority Christians in the past months.
    At Um al-Baneen camp, one of the UNHCR's 94 camps for internally displaced people in Baghdad, some 600 people live in one-room shacks with thatched roofs covered by blankets that often leak water during winter.
    Sewage muddies the dirt roads outside.
    Officials hastened to tidy up and clear heaps of rubble and waste before a visit by Guterres on Monday (January 24).
    Some of the squatters said economic problems had driven them from their homes as long ago as the period in the early 1990's following the first Gulf War.
    "I don't have a house and I don't have money to pay rent. I am now a squatter like all the people who are here. I'm helpless. I can't do anything," said Thaer Jassim, a resident of the camp.
    Children spend their days playing amid piles of rubbish and the stink of flowing sewage, and know no place else to call home.
    Touring the camp, Guterres said that though security has dramatically improved, refugees should not be forced to return to their areas of origin against their will.
    Some 500,000 people are displaced inside the war ravaged country with many living in squalor and poverty in squatter camps for years.
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