Frontier India Current Affairs

Written on June 15, 2008 – 1:38 pm | by FICA |

Iraq remains one of the most dangerous places in the world. Its refugee crisis is worsening. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, an estimated 4.7 million have been displaced both within and outside Iraq and for many the situation is desperate.

The international community is evading its responsibility toward refugees from Iraq by promoting a false picture of the security situation in Iraq when the country is neither safe nor suitable for return, Amnesty International said today.

“While the U.S. government’s rhetoric indicates otherwise, the human rights situation in Iraq remains too dire to encourage voluntary returns,” said Sarnata Reynolds, Amnesty International USA’s refugee program director, who traveled to Jordan in the fall of 2007 to document the Iraqi refugee crisis there.

In the report, which is based on recent research and interviews with Iraqi refugees, the organization said that the world’s richest states are failing to provide the necessary assistance to Iraqi refugees, most of whom are living in despair and hurtling towards destitution. People are being killed every month by armed groups, the Multinational Force, Iraqi security forces and private military and security guards. Kidnappings, torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention pervade the daily lives of Iraqis. People continue to attempt to flee, something that is now very difficult with the recent imposition of visa restrictions on Iraqis by Jordan and Syria. Syria alone may be hosting more than a million refugees. As of 2007, only 1 percent of the total Iraqi displaced population was estimated to be in the industrialized world.

Many families are destitute and facing impossible choices and new risks, like having to resort to child labour and the prospect of being forced through circumstances to undertake “voluntary” return to Iraq.

Humanitarian agencies cannot cope with growing demands as more refugees need help with the basics to survive. The UNHCR had planned that by the end of the year it would be distributing food to around 300,000 people in Syria alone. However, the agency recently announced that inadequate funding means that, by August 2008, it will not be able to “cover all basic health needs of Iraqis, and many serious and chronically ill Iraqis will not be able to receive their monthly medication.”

Current food aid for 150,000 refugees in Syria and Jordan could be reduced, forcing many Iraqis “into further destitution and raise the likelihood of higher malnutrition rates and increased child labor.”

Apart from failing to provide adequate practical and financial support, some states are also rejecting the asylum claims of Iraqis at an alarming rate. More European states are deporting rejected asylum-seekers to Iraq, including countries like Sweden, once a positive example to its European neighbours. Some states are using indirect ways to return people to Iraq, for example cutting off assistance to rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers and therefore forcing them to return “voluntarily”.