Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)

In 1999, Baghdad gave a name to its Arabization program: "nationality correction." The government began requiring ethnic minority civil servants to sign a form correcting their nationality. Persons refusing to sign the forms—for example, a Kurd refusing to "correct" his nationality and list himself as an Arab rather than a Kurd—would be subject to expulsion to northern Iraq or the no-fly zone in the south. During the year, Kurds and Turkoman families in Mosul and Kirkuk were reportedly expelled to northern Iraq for failure to sign the forms. Although the Arabization campaign was not publicized, sources in northern Iraq reported that more than 2,000 people were expelled to the northern region between January and November.

Most expellees moved north to the Kurdish-controlled governorates where they had relatives and the support of persons sharing their language and culture. However, they paid a price: those going north could not take their belongings. Few victims of internal deportation could sell their properties and belongings or receive a fair price for them in the brief time before expulsion. Kurds were forbidden from selling their homes to other Kurds or non-Arabs. The few who opted to move to predominantly Shi'a southern Iraq could take their belongings. Some expellees moved to the city of al Ramadi to the west of Baghdad, although whether the choice of al-Ramadi was voluntary is unclear.

Officials of the ruling Ba'ath Party implemented the government's Arabization policy in Kirkuk and other cities, maintaining lists of neighborhood residents by ethnicity. According to the special rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights, Ba'ath Party members typically confiscated targeted families' identification documents and ordered them to vacate their homes and leave the vicinity within 48 hours. Often the police would detain one member of a family during this time. When the family was ready to leave, they would report to the police station to fill in a form saying that they were leaving voluntarily. Then, the officials would release the detained relative to the family and return the person's identity documents.

In late November, the Interior Ministry reported that it had expelled about 4,000 families (about 24,000 people) from Baghdad itself who, it said, had migrated there "illegally" as a result of the 1991 Gulf War. The regime said that the expulsions, mostly to Wasit governorate in the east, Dhi Qar in the south, and Qadisiyah in the center, were intended to return internally displaced persons to their areas of origin and to relieve congestion in Baghdad.

Opposition sources, however, contended that most of the expelled families were Kurds and Shi'a, many from the Al-Thawra neighborhood, the scene of an anti-regime riot in February. They said that the expulsions were aimed at preventing political unrest in the capital. They noted that persons displaced from President Hussein's hometown of Tikrit were not included in the expulsion order.

Many residents of Kurdistan (northern Iraq) have been displaced multiple times. In 1998, the UN Center for Human Settlements (UN-Habitat) estimated that more than 1 million people (out of a population of 3 million) were internally displaced in the three northern governorates at one time or another. At least 100,000 of the displaced in the north are people from the government-controlled regions of Kirkuk, Khanaqin, and Sinjar bordering the north who have been expelled into the north in recent years, including 1999.

Those displaced in northern Iraq also include people previously displaced from government-controlled Iraq; about half of the displaced were forced out before 1991, many during the "Anfal" campaign in the late 1980s when Baghdad forces wiped out about 4,500 Kurdish villages, including virtually all villages near the borders of Turkey and Iran. The rest of the displaced have been uprooted from one part of northern Iraq to another by factional Kurdish in-fighting or, for people living in border areas, by incursions or shelling from outside the Kurdish-controlled region by Turkish, Iranian, or Iraqi government forces.

According to a November 1998 report from the UN secretary general, internally displaced persons in northern Iraq consisted of: a) persons in collective towns who were unable to return; b) persons who did not wish to return; and c) persons who had taken refuge in urban and semi-urban areas, and who, because of their vulnerable position, needed water, sewage, and other infrastructure services. Counting only groups (a) and (c), the secretary general estimated that 800,000 people remained internally displaced in northern Iraq.

Needs varied among the displaced in northern Iraq. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) assisted 120,000 internally displaced people based on its needs assessment, though the number displaced in the north is higher. UN-Habitat reported in March that it had provided housing for 30,000 people in northern Iraq to encourage the displaced to return or permanently settle. It further reported that its infrastructure improvements in more than 1,000 villages had benefited more than 250,000 rural people, but did not estimate how many were internally displaced people who might be considered to have been integrated.

There were more than 129,000 refugees and about 900,000 internally displaced persons in Iraq in 1999.  (Source:  US Committee for Refugees 1999 Report).  Known refugees in Iraq included about 26,500 from Iran and 11,200 from Turkey—in both cases, mostly Kurds. The total also included about 90,000 Palestinians and about 1,100 refugees of other nationalities, including Eritreans (574), Somalis (313), and Sudanese (220).

The estimated 800,000 internally displaced persons in the three northern governorates of Dohuk, Erbil, and Suleymaniyah included not only long-term internally displaced persons and persons displaced by Kurdish factional infighting, but also more than 100,000 persons, mostly Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkomans, more recently expelled from central-government-controlled Kirkuk and surrounding districts in the oil-rich region bordering the Kurdish-controlled north. At least another 100,000 persons were internally displaced elsewhere in Iraq, mostly in the southeastern marshlands.

Between one and two million Iraqis were estimated to be living outside Iraq in 1999 who would have a well-founded fear of persecution upon return, although only about 568,000 had any formal recognition as refugees or asylum seekers.

Many, such as some 50,000 to 180,000 Iraqis in Jordan and about 23,000 Iraqis in Syria, remained undocumented and were not formally recognized—or protected—as refugees. Elsewhere, some Iraqis were firmly settled and, therefore, were no longer counted as refugees in need of assistance and protection. Others, such as the 510,000 Iraqis in Iran and 5,391 Iraqis in the Rafha camp in Saudi Arabia, were still counted as refugees in need of assistance and protection.

In 1999, 30,800 Iraqis applied for asylum in Europe. The largest number, 8,800, applied for asylum in Germany. Greece reported receiving 906 Iraqi asylum applications in 1999, and tens of thousands of undocumented Iraqis reportedly lived in Greece during the year. UNHCR recognized 887 Iraqis as refugees in Jordan, and reported that another 7,127 Iraqis had applied in Jordan for refugee recognition during the year. Turkey hosted about 3,550 Iraqi refugees in 1999, and Lebanon hosted about 1,400.

The economic sanctions against Iraq has added to the increase in refugees leaving the country and seeking asylum in neighboring countries.. The UN Security Council created a humanitarian exception to the sanctions—called the oil-for-food program—which, in 1999, allowed Iraq to sell $5.26 billion worth of oil every six months to pay for food, humanitarian goods, reparations, and weapons inspections. Although the program was plagued by political and bureaucratic problems (including long delays by the UN Security Council's sanctions committee to approve contracts), by the end of the six-month period ending in November 1999, Iraq had exported more than $7 billion in oil, an increase permitted because of rising oil prices, and because low oil prices in the two previous six-month periods had resulted in a $3.1 billion shortfall in oil income to purchase essential goods.

for more information please visit the US Committee's web page at www.refugees.org

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