ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Every month, thousands of people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region leave the country, taking risky journeys in hopes of finding a better life abroad, the head of a foundation working with refugees and displaced persons told Rudaw on Tuesday. “In the first ten months of 2021, around 37,000 people from Kurdistan Region and Iraq have left the country, and migration continues,” the head of Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs Ari Jalal told Rudaw. This figure is only people who have left the country illegally. Jalal added that during that period, ten people have died en route to Europe and 12 migrants remain missing. According to Lutka data, in the past seven years over 633,000 people from Kurdistan Region and Iraq have migrated abroad. Of them, 261 have died on the way. The migrants often take dangerous and illegal routes and many have gotten stuck in Belarus, Syria, and Libya. In June, more than 140 Iraqi and Kurdish immigrants directed a message to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) through the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR), asking for help. They said they were forced to migrate “due to the instability of the Kurdistan Region and Iraq in terms of security, politics and religion.” The refugee federation sent a letter to the UNHCR at the time appealing for assistance for Iraqi refugees, stating that keeping them in camps for long periods of time and general poor treatment has made their lives “extremely difficult.” Iraqi refugees and displaced persons are “committing suicide, [suffering from] psychological illness, and frequent fires have led to their camps being burnt down in Greece, Iraq, Syria and other countries,” it stated. The Iraqi government is shutting down its camps, but the Kurdistan Region has kept its open. According to the Joint Crisis Coordination (JCC), which oversees camps in the Kurdistan Region, it hosts more than 660,000 displaced Iraqis and more people are entering the Region than returning home.
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