By Xinhua
Geneva : The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Friday that security conditions in Iraq are still not good enough for massive return of refugees.
“Currently, the U.N. refugee agency is not promoting returns to Iraq. Many areas are still considered unsafe and conditions are not conducive for return,” UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told journalists in Geneva.
“There is a general lack of access to material, legal and physical safety and proper services,” Spindler said.
According to the UNHCR, it is proving difficult to determine exactly how many Iraqi refugees are returning back home.
Figures provided by the Iraqi Red Crescent Society show that an estimated 25,000-28,000 Iraqis returned home between mid-September and the end of November, with the majority – some 20,000 – returning to Baghdad.
“UNHCR staff have spoken to a wide range of refugees before they left Syria, and some said they were returning because they believed that security had improved, while others said they had run out of resources and feared the winter period when the cost of living jumps,” Spindler said.
According to a survey conducted last week in Baghdad by one of UNHCR’s partners in Iraq, of 30 families who returned on a bus convoy organized by the Iraq government, only 33 percent managed to return to their original homes, while the rest ended up in another location in secondary displacement.
Some returnees found their property looted, occupied or destroyed.
There are more than 2.4 million Iraqis displaced inside their own country, while above 2.2 million have become refugees in other countries, particularly Syria and Jordan, the UNHCR said.