Only 200 billion Iraqi dinars IQD (USD135 million) were allocated for Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution in the Federal Budget Law for 2023, and thus the total budget spent to implement the article during the past six years reached about 300 billion IQD whiole thousands of applicants have not been compensated since 2007.
The Federal Budget Law for the years 2023, 2024 and 2025, which was published on Tuesday, June 26 in the Iraqi Fact Sheet, included the allocation of 200 billion IQD for the supreme committee to implement Article 140 of the Constitution during the current year.
According to the budget law, the same amount will be disbursed for the years 2024 and 2025.
This comes after the reactivation of the Supreme Committee for the implementation of Article 140 in accordance with the ministerial platform of new cabinet chaired by by Muhammad Shia'a al-Sudani, in addition to allocating a budget for it and disbursing financial dues to those covered by the article.
The Higher Committee for the Implementation of Article 140 was formed in 2006 and one of its tasks is to compensate the families who were deported from their areas and who were dispatched and relocated in the areas of deportees during the period of the rule of the previous regime (1968-2003).
The committee has offices in several governorates, and its work has stopped during the past years due to lack or lack of budget allocation for it.
Last year, due to the lack of approval of the budget law, no amount was spent for Article 140, but according to (KirkukNow) follow-up, 12.5 billion IQD were allocated in the budget law for the year 2021.
In 2020, the budget law was not approved, and in 2019, 50 billion IQD were allocated for the implementation of Article 140, and the budget law for the years 2017 and 2018 included the disbursement of 5 billion dinars only for the article.
The entrance to Al-Qosh district, one of the disputed territories, Nineveh, 2019. KirkukNow
In the period from 2016 to the end of 2023, more than 292 billion IQD were allocated to the Supreme Committee for the implementation of Article 140.
According to the Iraqi constitution, which was approved by the majority of voters in Iraq in 2005, the fate of the disputed territories must be decided according to three stages that begin with normalization and then a census, provided that this is followed by a local referendum on their ownership, according to Article 140, which sets the end of 2007 as the deadline for the implementation of these stages.
In 2019, the Iraqi Federal Court ended the controversy over “the enforcement of Article 140” and stressed that the article should be activated until all procedures related to that article are implemented.
This constitutional article is based on the implementation of the content of Article 58 of the Law of Administration for the Iraqi State for the Transitional Period, which was issued in March 2004 and consists of three main paragraphs.
So far, part of the first phase of Article 140 has been implemented, which is compensation for the families who were deported from Kirkuk and other disputed territories after their return, as well as compensation for the Arab settlers to the governorate after their return to their areas of origin.
Each displaced family receives a compensation of 10 million dinars, while expatriate families are granted 20 million dinars after returning them to their areas from which they came.
In the middle of last May, the names of 100 families returned to obtain compensation within the framework of Article 140.
In Kirkuk governorate alone, more than 54,000 displaced and expatriate families received compensation certificates within 10 years, according to the statistics of the Supreme Committee for the Implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, and there are still thousands who have not received compensation.
According to official statistics for the years 2007 to 2012, over 136,000 forms were returned to the Office for the Implementation of Article 140 in Nineveh Governorate, with its main headquarters in Sinjar district.
Resolving the fate of the Kirkuk governorate and more than 11 administrative units within the borders of the governorates of Nineveh, Diyala and Salah al-Din depends on the application of this article.
