Thousands of displaced persons return home ‘voluntarily,’ Iraq says

“The coming days will see the return of other batches of displaced families, especially those living in the camps.”

Kurdistan 24 2019/08/21 15:14

middle east Iraq IDPs Baghdad Nineveh Salahuddin

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration on Wednesday said over 4,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living in a displacement facility in Salahuddin province returned to their areas of origin “voluntarily.”

Ali Abbas Jahakir, a senior ministry official, said in a statement that 4,425 IDPs from the Qadisiya camp in Salahuddin “have returned to their areas of origin” in other parts of the province as well as Nineveh province.

Jahakir noted that the families had returned “voluntarily” but did not specify a timeline for the departure or the number of people still at the site.

“The coming days will see the return of other batches of displaced families, especially those living in the camps,” he added.

According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the camp population as of July 2019 was around 3,900 people. The displacement ministry’s number suggests that the start of the migration from Qadisiya was longer than a month.

In early August, the ministry also said that within three days, 421 IDPs had returned to their places of origin from many different camps in Salahuddin and Nineveh.

The displacement ministry had coordinated with the transport ministry as well as security forces to allocate the prospective returnees with buses and move them back to their areas safely, Jahakir said then.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany