By NNN-KUNA
Geneva : The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has said that five years after the 2003 war in Iraq more people than ever before are displaced from conflict and sectarian violence, indicating that the humanitarian crisis in the country is far from being solved.
According to IOM, there are now more than 5.1 million Iraqis who are either displaced (IDPs) within Iraq or are living as refugees abroad. Of these, 2.7 million are IDPs and more than 2.4 million refugees, predominantly living in neighbouring Syria and Jordan.
IOM spokesperson Jemini Pandya told reporters Tuesday that conditions for the displaced have considerably worsened in this time with shelter, food, and employment remaining priority needs for Iraqi IDPs and refugees alike. These needs remain unmet due to ongoing insecurity and a major lack of funding for humanitarian relief.
“Many IDPs live in sub-standard or over-crowded shelter as they are largely without the income to afford escalating rent prices. More than 75 per cent of IDPs do not have access to government food rations, and nearly 20 per cent are without clean water while 33 per cent do not have access to the medications they require,” she said.
IOM’s chief of mission for Iraq Rafiq Tschannen said that many of those returning cannot return to their homes because they are occupied or have been destroyed, forcing them into secondary displacement.
IOM’s own assessments of nearly 1 million recently displaced people show that for over one third of them, their homes have been occupied by others. He stressed that they have no home to go back to.