Iraq’s Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: The Untold Story By Elizabeth Ferris * While largely absent from mainstream media coverage of the war, the needs of Iraqis displaced by the war have been a major concern to the humanitarian community. But the presence of some 2.2 million Iraqi refugees in the region and around 2.3 million Iraqi internally displaced persons (IDPs) is not just a humanitarian concern. It could well have consequences for the entire region and for those concerned about security, stability, and reconciliation inside Iraq. This is the largest displacement of people in the Middle East since the uprooting of Palestinians in 1948 with one out of six Iraqis now living outside their communities. Although data are incomplete, let me briefly summarize what we know about this displaced population. Let’s start with numbers. Around 1 million Iraqis who had been internally displaced under the Saddam Hussein regime remained displaced after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Since then another 1.2 or 1.3 million Iraqis have been displaced within Iraq’s borders. People have left their homes because of sectarian violence, coalition military operations, and general insecurity. Since the bombing of the al-Askari mosque in February 2006, sectarian violence has become the leading cause of displacement. 1 The best estimates today are that there are some 2.25 million internally displaced Iraqis and over 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria, 500-750,000 in Jordan, 80-100,000 in Egypt, 40,000 in Lebanon, and 200,000 in the Gulf (including Saudi Arabia.) With the exception of a few hundred Iraqi Palestinians, none of these refugees live in camps. This is an urban refugee situation – just as inside Iraq, it is an urban IDP situation. In fact, this is the largest urban refugee situation in the world. While there are many positive aspects to the Iraqi dispersal among the host country’s population rather than concentrated in camps, one of the clear consequences of the urban nature of the displacement is that it is less visible. It is harder to get a handle on the conditions facing urban IDPs and refugees and even on their numbers. It is more difficult to organize humanitarian assistance to people who are often ‘in hiding.’ I find it shocking that there has been so little * Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy & Co-Director of Brookings-Bern Project on IDP Refugee Watch, 32, December 2008
Iraq’s Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: The Untold Story
Jul 11, 2023
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