KRG expresses concern over its share of the 1000 schools to be built by China in Iraq
"A construction contract has been signed by the Iraqi government and China, but the Kurdistan Region has been excluded from the final proceedings."
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Saturday, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Education expressed concern about whether the Kurdistan Region would receive its share of the 1000 schools China is building in Iraq.
Yesterday, the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi laid the foundation stone for the first of the one thousand new schools to be built by China in Iraq’s provinces. A construction contract has been signed by the Iraqi government and China, but the Kurdistan Region has been excluded from the final proceedings and has not received any schools or indication of where and when they would be constructed.
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“We congratulate the Iraqi provinces included in this project, [but] we express our concern that the Kurdistan Region has been deprived of its share from this project, which is 150 schools out of the total one thousand schools,” the statement from the KRG Ministry of Education read.
The statement pointed out that the governors of the Kurdistan Region’s provinces formed part of the Iraqi delegation that visited China to discuss the project. The region’s Ministry of Education has discussed its share of the project with the Iraqi Federal Ministry of Education since 2020.
“This agreement is for all Iraq and Iraqis,” read the KRG statement. “More than 180,000 internally displaced students from various Iraqi provinces live in the Kurdistan Region and attend schools [here].”
The statement explained that most schools in the Kurdistan region are currently at capacity or overloaded due to the influx of these displaced students.
“We have done this for the Iraqi displaced families because we believe it is a humanitarian responsibility,” the statement read. “In the past, we have requested funds from the Iraqi government to renovate the schools used by the internally displaced Iraqi students, but the government has rejected our petitions.”
In its statement, the KRG Ministry of Education called on Iraq’s federal government to treat the right to education as an equal right for all Iraqis, without discriminating between different groups.
