Refugee returns suspended due to insecurity and housing shortage - UNHCR

Refugees returns from Iran have temporarily suspended over the past 10 days, due to insecurity in the south and a shortage of housing in the north of Iraq, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday. "Convoys to the south were stopped because of the ongoing fighting in Najaf as the situation has become tense there," a spokeswoman for UNHCR's Iraq operations, Astrid Van Genderen Stort, told IRIN from the Jordanian capital, Amman on Wednesday. UNHCR has been organising convoys from Iran to the southern Iraqi city of Basra since last November, but these have been put on hold several times during the past few months because of security concerns. The refugee agency was not encouraging returns to Iraq due to the volatile situation there, but was facilitating those people who wanted to return and were prepared to make their way over a heavily mined and dangerous border. Returns to northern Iraq have also been halted for the time being, after local authorities expressed concern that there was not enough housing to accommodate people coming back to the region. Up to a million Iraqis are estimated to be displaced in their own country as a result of expulsion policies that the former regime used to remove opponents and gain valuable land in the southern marshes and resources like oil in the north, according to various institutions. As a result, the Iraqi Property Claims Commission (IPCC) was set up in January 2003 by the then US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, now replaced by an interim government, to deal with any property taken illegally by the former regime. The commission has hired lawyers and other administrators to process people's claims and try and help them get their property back, or give them money if they had their property taken between July 1968 and 9 April 2003. UNHCR had only recently started facilitating returns through the Haj Omran crossing in northern Iran at the end of June to make it easier for those returning to the north, rather than having to travel through the south first. In total, five UNHCR convoys have crossed the newly opened northern border, carrying some 543 Iraqi Kurds who had been living in refugee camps in Iran's Kordestan province. They returned to the provinces of Sulaymaniyah, Arbil, Dahuk and Rania. In order to help alleviate the problem, UNHCR has been working with its partners to help build more housing. "We have various reintegration projects in the north which provide most of the returning refugees and returning internally displaced people (IDPs), with shelter or housing support," van Genderen Stort said. "In many cases the beneficiaries participate in the building process, with some technical support. Local communities benefit from the recontruction of the local infrastructure, repair of water supplies, schools, teachers houses and the provision of livelihoods (fertilisers, seedlings and animals) education, income generating actvities and vocational training." "The housing needs are addressed together with UNHCR's reintegration activities taking place in over 70 locations in northern Iraq alone, benefiting 30,000 people," she explained, adding that only half of that number received shelter as UNHCR was not the main agency for dealing with housing. The UN estimates that some 20 percent of the people already in the north have inadequate housing. There was no date specified for when returns would resume to the north and UNHCR is going to hold further consultations with all parties involved including local authorities, NGOs, and other UN agencies in early September. In addition, van Genderen Stort said the long-term reintegration needs of the returnees would be addressed through various activities in the north and south. Some 13,000 people have gone back to Iraq from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon with UNHCR's assistance. More than half of them crossed from Iran, which hosts the largest Iraqi refugee population in the world. Returnees receive a package of relief items, including tents, blankets, plastic sheeting, kitchen sets and one-month's food ration, as well as travel assistance and mine-awareness training.