Iraq aims to compensate victims of terrorism, including Kurdistan Region
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi federal government plans to compensate those who suffered from acts of terrorism in the country, and the decision will also include the autonomous Kurdistan Region, a Kurdish official has claimed.
“According to the plan, the families of martyrs would receive up to IQD 50 million (US $42,000) and people injured in terror attacks would be compensated IQD 5 million ($4,200),” Nizar Mama, the head of the Iraqi Committee for Defending Victims of Terror’s office in Erbil, told Kurdistan 24 on Saturday.
He mentioned registration for people who would like their cases considered will start in a week or so.
Compensation will include victims who were with the Iraqi forces, Kurdish Peshmerga, and security forces who participated in the fight against the Islamic State as well as those who have had their properties and material possessions destroyed or damaged by the jihadist group.
Mama stated the progran would extend to all victims of terrorist attacks carried out across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
“We are in constant talks with Baghdad to allocate funds for the compensation of terror victims in the 2019 national budget bill, and we have already received preliminary approval in this regard,” he added.
Compensation will not include those who suffered or were the victim of Iraq’s former authoritarian regime led by Saddam Hussein.
Kurds in the past decades have repeatedly tried to pressure Baghdad to compensate the Kurdish victims of Saddam’s genocidal campaigns and chemical attacks, which the federal government of Iraq has rejected multiple times. Instead, they have asked the Kurds to file wrongdoing against the companies who sold chemical weapons to the former dictator.
The Provincial Council of Nineveh on Saturday by majority vote decided to compensate survivors of the Islamic State by granting them plots of lands inside Mosul city.
“Compensation could be seen as moral and financial support to those who suffered from the war,” Saido Chato, the head of the Nineveh Provincial Council, told Kurdistan 24 on Saturday.
The Iraqi official mentioned that the decision also extends to members of the Iraqi forces and Peshmerga who participated in the battle to liberate the Nineveh province.
Following the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq in 2014, dozens of thousands of people have been killed, and over six million people were internally displaced.
Editing by Nadia Riva