ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq’s Minister of Displacement and Migration Evan Faeq Jabro will visit the Kurdistan Region on Thursday in response to the spike in deaths by suicide in displacements camps, according to state media. The minister has previously noted her visit will start discussions about accelerating the closure of camps in the autonomous region.
The minister also announced the formation of a committee to examine the general rise in suicide in Iraq, especially within displacement camps, Iraqi State Media (INA) reported on Tuesday.
The new committee will start its work by visiting five displacement camps in the Kurdistan Region to produce a study on the subject, INA reported.
At least eleven Yazidis have died by suicide in the three weeks since the start of 2021, sources have told Rudaw English.
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The minister told Al Monitor last week that the trip would serve as the basis to start closing down camps in the autonomous region, which have thus far not followed suit with the federal government’s rapid camp closure mission.
“As for the Kurdistan Region’s camps, we are about to conduct a special visit to coordinate an effort to close 10 camps in the first phase [of closures]," she told the media outlet.
In October 2020, six years after the advance of ISIS left millions of residents of northern and western Iraq displaced, Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement announced it would be accelerating its shutdown of camps in central government-run territory, still home to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi.
The UN and international NGOs have expressed worry about the hastiness of camp closures, but the government has continued to press ahead.
The KRG doesn’t appear to be planning the mass closure of its camps – home to over 200,000 Iraqi IDPs, according to the KRG’s Joint Crisis Coordination Centre (JCC), with another 500,000 IDPs living in urban communities – though it continues with its years-long push for voluntary returns.
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"After the closure of the Salamiyya camp in Nineveh Governorate, we are now waiting for a decision from the Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi to start the process of closing Al-Jada'a camp in Mosul, which now has 2,290 displaced families," Ali Abbas, Spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement, told Rudaw on Monday.
Families with suspected links to the Islamic State (ISIS) group that were at the Salamiya camp, which closed on Friday, were to be moved to al-Jadaa camp in Mosul, Abbas told Rudaw English on January 12. "They cannot return [home] because of the tribal persecution and societal rejection."
"Al-Jada camp will be closed after solving the problem of ISIS families, as these families must be reintegrated into society again because they cannot be isolated in camps forever," he added.
