In the Iraqi provinces, including the Kurdistan Region, there are still 86 camps that house thousands of families after more than two years of ISIS defeat.
According to latest data of the Ministry of Migration and Displacement of the Iraqi government, among 184 camps that were established due to the emergence of ISIS, 86 camps still host IDPs.
Ali Abbas, the spokesman of the ministry, has informed the Iraqiya agency that 68 thousand IDPs live in that 86 camps. 40 people to four thousand IDPs live in the camps.
The Iraqi government announced ISIS defeat in 2017, but, still, thousands of people live in displacement and have not returned to their place of origin due to different factors, including lack of security, reconstructions, and service delivery.
The data show that highest number of camps is in Anbar province with 27 camps followed by Duhok with 17 camps, Mosul with six camps, Erbil six camps, Sulaimani with four camps, Diyala with three, Kirkuk and Baghdad with two fields each, and Salahuddin and Karbala with one each.
Highest number of camps is in Anbar province
Abbas stated that most of the IDPs, who are mostly Yazidis and, in general, people of Nineveh province, are residing in the camps in the Kurdistan Region. However, in Anbar, the camps are plentiful, but they are empty as the rate of return has reached 95 percent.
The minister’s data contradicts the data of the Joint Crisis Coordination Center (JCC), which is under the control of the Ministry of Interior of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
JCC has published that more than 787 thousand and 367 IDPs live in the Kurdistan Region, and more than 200 thousand of them live in the camps.
JCC claims that the displacement of people continues. Only last year, an additional nine thousand have again become displace after returning to their place of origin and moving back to KRG due to different reasons.
From Mid 2014 to 2017, six million Iraqi people, equivalent to 15 percent of the country’s population, were displaced due to ISIS attacks and liberation of the ISIS held-territories.
