“When the government made this decision, it did not take into account the situation of the displaced families in the event of their return, in terms of their housing and their children’s studies, the deplorable condition of the schools,” Saja al-Bayati, head of the Hala Organization for Sustainable Development, told Rudaw. She estimated that there are 285,000 students registered in federally-run schools in Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaimani.
The federal Ministry of Education opened the schools to accommodate Iraqi students who were displaced from their homes by the conflict with the Islamic State (ISIS) and sought refuge in the Kurdistan Region. The ministry now wants to close its representation offices in the Kurdistan Region as part of Baghdad’s push to close all IDP camps by July 30.
Teaching staff and parents of students are planning a protest for Thursday when they will collect signatures on a petition appealing for the representation offices to remain open.
At a protest in Erbil last Thursday, demonstrators asked Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani to keep the schools open so that students receive a “basic education according to the curriculum of the Iraqi Ministry of Education.”
There are more than 630,000 displaced Iraqis living in the Kurdistan Region, most of them do not live in the Region’s 23 IDP camps, according to the most recent information from the government’s crisis centre.
While ISIS was declared militarily defeated in Iraq in 2017, thousands of families have still not returned home because of lack of basic services like water and electricity, their homes, schools, and hospitals are still in ruins, and the areas are still not safe.
The Iraqi government, however, wants to close the file on the country’s displaced families and is offering cash incentives, basic goods, and employment opportunities for people who return to their original homes.
The head of the United Nations mission in Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert in a briefing to the Security Council earlier this month said that she welcomes concrete steps to end displacement, but that all returns and relocations must be “safe, voluntary, dignified and inclusive.”
The UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq Ghulam Isaczai tweeted on Saturday that he met with people who had returned to their home village five months earlier “yet [are] still living in makeshift shelters and lack access to water, school and health facilities.”
Iraq has a shortage of schools and has an agreement with China to build 1,000 new schools across the country by the end of 2024.