ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq’s Minister of Migration and Displacement is visiting the Kurdistan Region amid a spike in suicides among Yazidi youth and a government push to close down camps.
“No matter how much the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) provides services, in the end, it’s a camp and it lacks a lot,” Ali Abbas, spokesperson for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement, told Rudaw’s Omer Kalo on Friday.
The Yazidis “have been there a long time,” he said, adding the prolonged displacement will damage families and the community in the long term.
More than 11,000 families have returned home since the liberation of Shingal in 2015, but more than 28,000 families are still living in camps in the Kurdistan Region, as well as thousands more living in host communities, according to Abbas.
The Iraqi government is on a push to shut down camps across the country, a move that has attracted criticism from rights groups.
Minister of Migration and Displacement Evan Faeq Jabro visited the Kurdistan Region this week in response to a spike in deaths by suicide in the camps. She also intends to start discussions about accelerating the closure of camps in the autonomous region.
“We have closed down 19 camps all over Iraq, what is left is the camps in the Kurdistan Region plus one camp in Nineveh,” said Abbas.
The UN and international NGOs have expressed worry about the hastiness of camp closures, but the government continued to press ahead.
The KRG does not have a similar plan to shut down its camps – home to nearly 200,000 displaced Iraqis, according to the KRG’s Joint Crisis Coordination Centre (JCC). Another more than 500,000 displaced Iraqis are living outside of the camps, in urban communities.
Abbas also noted that returning families to their homes “is our main goal,” but they face challenges of insecurity, lack of services and job opportunities, minefields and explosives, as well as families “being targeted by Turkish planes and the forces there.”
Yazidis make up 30 percent of the displaced families, according to KRG figures. The Yazidi homeland in the Shingal area has come under attack from Turkish forces, targeting alleged positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Families are “scared and anxious” about returning home, said Abbas. The ministry’s hopes is that implementation of the Erbil-Baghdad agreement on Shingal will ease the process.
“In terms of implementing the deal between Erbil and Baghdad, the procedures are slow and the deal has not been implemented properly,” Haidar Shasho, commander of the Ezidkhan Protection Force in Shingal incorporated into the Peshmerga forces, told Rudaw English on January 18.
Baghdad reached a deal with the KRG on October 9 over the governance and security of Shingal, which is disputed between the two governments.
Under the agreement, security for the troubled region is Baghdad's responsibility. The federal government will establish a new armed force recruited from the local population and expel fighters from the PKK and their affiliated groups, according to details released in October.
The Islamic State group (ISIS) committed genocide against Yazidis in Shingal when it seized control of large swathes of Iraqi territory in 2014, displacing up to six million Iraqis – some of whom found refuge in host communities, while others settled in camps. Thousands of Yazidis were killed or taken into captivity.
At least eleven Yazidis have died by suicide in the three weeks since the start of 2021, sources have told Rudaw English.
The minister announced the formation of a committee to examine the rise in suicide in Iraq, especially within the camps.
