UN donates nearly 10,000 tent covers for displaced people in Kurdistan Region

Sardasht IDP camp on Sinjar Mountain, Jan. 19, 2021. (Photo: Kurdistan 24)
Sardasht IDP camp on Sinjar Mountain, Jan. 19, 2021. (Photo: Kurdistan 24)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The United Nations migration agency this week donated approximately 10,000 tents for refugees and displaced people sheltering in the Kurdistan Region.

The dark blue tents provided by the International Organization for Migration are worth $2.5 million and will be distributed by the Kurdistan Region’s crisis management team, the Joint Crisis Coordination Center.

The 9,100 donated tents were handed over to the Kurdish authorities in the regional capital Erbil to be used for “humanitarian” purposes, the UN agency tweeted on Thursday.

The Kurdish region still hosts the largest portion of the displaced population in Iraq, accounting for nearly one million people, according to latest figures from the JCC. Nearly 70 percent of the expenditures of the camps and of the refugees are covered by the Kurdistan Regional Government.

More than 665,000 people are still displaced from fighting after 2003 and the war against ISIS, with about 30 percent living in camps while the rest are with host communities – typically living with family and friends outside their home areas.

Refugees account for about 263,000 of the displaced population, and are mostly Syrian, Turkish, Iranian, and Palestinians, according to the Kurdish agency.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s government intends to return the displaced population to their places of origin, a move that has exacerbated the already fragile condition of the IDPs as they are left with no access to water, security, and healthcare services upon their return. This is mainly due to a discriminatory application of Iraq’s 2009 compensation law, Human Rights Watch recently found. 

One of the issues Iraq faces is the return of a population with perceived ties to ISIS. The terrorist group effectively ruled one-third of the country for three years before it was defeated in 2017.