“The ministry’s office in Turkey, in coordination with the Iraqi embassy in Ankara and the Iraqi Ministry of Transport, provided busses to transport Iraqi refugees from Turkey to homeland,” Asghar Dousa said in a statement on Tuesday.
The refugees re-entered Iraqi territory through the Ibrahim Khalil border gate between the Kurdistan Region and Turkey. The returns were voluntary, according to the statement.
“He [Dousa] stressed the Ministry’s continuation in having Iraqis return from the Turkish republic to their liberated areas without a cost,” it read.
The destination of the returnees or where they are from in Iraq was not disclosed in the statement, nor were the reasons for their displacement.
More than 3,000,000 Iraqis were displaced when the Islamic State (ISIS) swept through northern Iraq in 2014, with more than a million coming to the Kurdistan Region. A total of 260,000 Iraqis are refugees in other countries, including Turkey, according to UN statistics.
Many of the displaced have since returned home, but more than 1,600,000 Iraqis are still displaced, according to the International Office of Migration (IOM).
According to the Kurdistan Region’s Joint Crisis Coordination Center (JCC), 763,277 displaced Iraqis currently live in the Kurdistan Region.
Iraqi displaced returnees receive 1,500,000 IQD (around $1,200) per family to help with their resettlement, according to the Ministry Migration and Displaced.
Other displaced Iraqis have returned home as well recently. The ministry announced that 4,325 came back to the Nineveh province from camps in the Saladin province in August, for example.
However, other returnees are now going back to the camps in the Kurdistan Region again, including some from Mosul, citing a lack of security and ability to make a living in their home areas.
