ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Around a quarter of Iraqi refugees in Germany are granted a right to stay in the country, a German state minister told Rudaw while stressing that Berlin does not deport refugees to areas deemed unsafe for return.
“Some of the Iraqis are granted the right to stay, the ratio of the Iraqis who are granted the right to stay ranges from 20 percent to 25 percent, this means 75 percent must return,” Siegfried Lorek, the Justice Minister of Germany’s Baden-Wurttemberg state told Rudaw’s Alla Shally late last month.
According to Lorek, around 3,275 Iraqis were told to leave Germany, a number that he said was “too low” as authorities await an agreement between the German and Iraqi governments over the deportation of Iraqi refugees.
In January, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sought Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s help to figure out a mechanism to return Iraqi refugees from Germany.
Lorek said that 471 Iraqis were deported last month, 77 of which were sent back to Iraq while the rest were sent to the initial countries they had entered Germany from.
While acknowledging that some areas in Iraq are unstable and unsafe for refugees to return, Lorek said that Germany sends the refugees to areas in the country deemed safe for return.
“We do not send anyone back to the unstable areas, but where they go later, it is up to them,” he said.
In an interview with Rudaw in August, Gonul Eglence, a member of the regional parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, said that Iraqi asylum seekers must not be deported to Iraq, deeming it an unsafe country.
Eglence explained that many individuals cannot be deported because they could face political persecution or face their lives being risked due to their religious beliefs.
“Those people will not be deported. Instead, they receive Duldung. That means they can stay temporarily,” she said.
According to Lorek, Germany is struggling with immigration resettlement as it is unable to provide Iraqis immigrating to Germany with adequate accommodation.
“They should expect to be resettled in school gymnasiums because we do not have places left, this is the reality now,” he said.
Tens of thousands of mostly young people leave Iraq and the Kurdistan Region for Europe annually in search of a better life, using smuggling routes. They risk their lives crossing borders in harsh, freezing conditions or taking deadly sea crossings to reach mainland Europe or the United Kingdom. Many hope to settle in Germany.
Regarding programs for receiving Yazidis, Lorek said that in 2022, the state of Baden-Wurttemberg received around 1,000 Yazidi women, and they have agreed with their partners in the government to receive an additional 200. The majority of the newcomers will be the relatives of those who were already received.
The largest diaspora Yazidi community in the world is found in Germany, where over 200,000 members of the ethnoreligious group live, according to data obtained by Rudaw from German State Minister for Integration Reem Alabali-Radovan in January.
“Following the [Islamic State] ISIS crimes in 2014, German states launched special programs to receive refugees. Therefore, the biggest Yazidi diaspora is in Germany. Over 200,000 Yazidis live in Germany. The German government takes steps [to address this issue] and this is very important for me,” Alabali-Radovan said.
ISIS seized control of swathes of Iraqi land in 2014 and committed genocide against the Yazidis after overrunning their religious heartland of Shingal in Nineveh province. More than 6 thousand Yazidis were abducted and thousands remain missing.
Among the group’s crimes are “executions, torture, amputations, ethno-sectarian attacks, rape, and sexual slavery imposed on women and girls,” according to the United Nations.
