Crisis warning on Iraq refugees

Syria hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees

26 July 2007

The scale of the exodus of refugees fleeing violence in Iraq has prompted a "humanitarian crisis", a conference in Jordan has heard.

More than two million Iraqis have left their war-ravaged homeland.

The UN says about 50,000 more people leave Iraq each month, mostly to Jordan and Syria which want international help to ease the burden on their services.

The UN refugee agency says the mass displacement is threatening the region's stability.

It says the wave of displacement sparked by the war in Iraq is the biggest in the Middle East since 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the newly created Israel.

"The humanitarian duty calls upon all of us to look more seriously at the size of the problem and acknowledge that there is a real humanitarian crisis," Muhammad Hajj Hamoud, secretary general of Iraq's foreign ministry, told the summit for Iraq's neighbours, as well as the UN, US and UK.

"We have lost [our] house, we are lost, my daughter is lost, my son [is] lost... help this family please," Najla Abda Karim SalehIraqi refugee in Jordan

He added that efforts to stem the flow of refugees by Iraq's neighbours - who now impose tougher entry restrictions - resulted in cases of mistreatment at border crossings.

The Jordanian delegate, for his part, focused on security issues, warning that background checks were needed before people were allowed to stay.

One refugee in Jordan, grandmother Najla Abda Karim Saleh, fled with her son and daughter. Another daughter was killed in sectarian violence.

She told the BBC she wanted help from the UN to bring the her four grandchildren to safety in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

"We have lost [our] house, we are lost, my daughter is lost, my son [is] lost... help this family please," she wept.

Hosts over-stretched

Jordan and Syria want some assurance that the Iraqis will either eventually return to their homeland or be resettled elsewhere.

Egypt and Lebanon have also received thousands of Iraqis.

The UN refugee agency earlier this month doubled its annual appeal for funding to help uprooted Iraqis to $123m to boost medical care, shelter and other support.

Craig Johnstone, the UN deputy high commissioner for refugees, called for international assistance, since Syria and Jordan had few resources to cope with the influx.

"The international community, I think, has neglected the plight of the refugees from Iraq so far, but they are beginning to act," he told the BBC.

In May, Jordan said hosting the Iraqis was costing the desert kingdom about $1bn a year.

The UN says Syria hosts 1.4 million displaced Iraqis, and Jordan 750,000.

In Jordan, clinics provide free immunisation to Iraqi children, but not full health-care services.

Government schools, already stretched to the maximum, only allow a small portion of Iraqi children with residency permits to attend.

Syria provides greater services to the Iraqis, but even there the UN says that only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugee children there are able to attend school.

The UN refugee agency says it hopes to find a permanent home for a total of 20,000 Iraqi exiles by the end of the year.

Although the US administration announced earlier in the year that it would allow 7,000 Iraqis into the US by the end of September, it has allowed in just 133 over the past nine months because of stringent security measures.

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