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TechnoratiMore than four million Iraqis have fled their homes because of sectarian violence, the largest population movement in the Middle East since Palestinians left the new state of Israel, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.
"An estimated 4.2 million Iraqis have been uprooted from their homes, with the monthly rate of displacement climbing to over 60,000 people compared to 50,000 previously," UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists.
More than two million Iraqis are displaced within their own country, with around half being uprooted following the February 2006 Samarra bombings, seen as the catalyst for the latest wave of sectarian conflict, the UNHCR said.
"Many are barely surviving in makeshift camps, inaccessible to aid workers for security reasons," Pagonis warned.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, and Pagonis said many families were "choosing to leave ethnically mixed areas before they are forced to do so."
More than 1.4 million have crossed into neighbouring Syria with between 500,000 and 750,000 heading into Jordan, the UNHCR said.
The UNHCR and UN children's agency UNICEF have jointly appealed for help in paying for the education of 155,000 Iraqi refugee children, putting forward a figure of 129 million dollars to get them into schools for the 2007-2008 academic years.
This would allow 100,000 to go to school in Syria, 50,000 in Jordan, 2,000 in Egypt, 1,500 in Lebanon and 1,500 in other regional countries.
Coinciding with the refugee agency's latest figures of an ever-growing exodus from Iraq, the United States announced it was giving 30 million dollars to the joint UNHCR-UNICEF education initiative.
"We encourage all potential donors to join us in supporting this appeal," Ellen Sauerbrey, a US assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said in the Jordanian capital Amman.
Washington, which led the 2003 war on Iraq, has however been widely criticised for not doing enough in accepting Iraqi refugees waiting in Syria and Jordan for asylum in third countries.
Only 133 Iraqi refugees have been allowed into the United States since October, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in July, blaming the slow pace on rigorous security vetting of candidates for resettlement.
Sauerbrey said she was in Jordan and Turkey this past week to discuss ways to expedite resettling Iraqi asylum-seekers.
"We expect that over 400 Iraqi refugees will travel to the US this month from Jordan, Turkey and Syria and will be resettled in many cities across our country," she said.
"We are working towards welcoming close to 2,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September."
"We have a very strong feeling that it is our moral responsibility to do this (resettle Iraqis). Particularly we have a very moral obligation to those who are in danger because of their association with US forces," Sauerbrey said.
She also admitted that the process has been "slow."
"I am the first to admit my own frustration that we have not been able to move larger numbers more quickly," she said, pledging that Washington planned to step up the process in 2008.
The number of Iraqi asylum seekers in Europe in the first half of 2007 rose to nearly 20,000, the same number received during the whole of 2006, according to the UNHCR.
Both Damascus and Amman have spoken of the burden posed by the refugees on their infrastructure.
Jordan has said that sheltering the influx costs the kingdom around one billion dollars a year.
The Christian relief organisation World Vision on Tuesday described the Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria as "forgotten people," and called international aid agencies their "only hope."
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse
17 Comments so far
Show AllKEM:
Thank you for interjecting the fact of activated and oxidizing Depleted Uranium into the consideration here. I'll add that it is eye opening to look at satellite photos of dust clouds sweeping over contintents and around the world to realize (yes, the risk is greater to those in the middle east) that we are all at risk to DU toxicity, this of course includes the destruction of life force within the atmosphere even without inhalation.
Search "photos of depleted uranium babies" and you will realize that it's not just the US Constitution that is facing a suicide bullet, but the very constitution of humanities genetic code.
Call To Impeach: for Justice and Humanity!
This behavior will stop one way or another, let it be through the recognition and expression of human dignity.
The sooner they flee, the less poisonous DU they will inhale.
They are all just going on vacation for the summer. Life is good
DJ they are all too busy watching American idol.
"Hey, come back y'all!
GW Bush brings you **FREEDOM** Mr and Mrs Iraqi!"
--> Freedom from ever owning your own safe little home ever again.
Freedom from having arms. Or eyes. - Or legs.
Freedom from having your 'insurgent' kids still alive and able to run freely to school.
Freedom from owning a functioning car anymore.
Freedom from having an un-bombed village now.
Freedom from all the meagre possessions you had to hurriedly leave behind, -(those which you'd worked a lifetime to achieve).
Freedom from having a working sewage system in your district.
Freedom from having any proper electricity supply in your town.
Freedom from any interruptions from annoying phone calls, now all the lines are down.
Freedom from NOT having to fear every moment for your very life.
Freedom from having any gas for your cars.
Freedom from having a *front door* anymore, coz as you came to know, a closed door is seen as 'a potential threat', by invading American troops, so many of you took the front door off, so as not to be shot in your beds by the crazed US soldiers.
Freedom from having to tend your silly old life-sustaining crops and animals anymore.
Freedom from having too much choice in the shops (-what ever happened to all those shops that used to be there anyway?)
Freedom from having to talk to relatives, -now you have buried most of them.
Freedom from having to visit hospital for your wife's overdue pregnancy, now the hospital isn't there anymore, and anyway - all the doctors have either been killed or have fled.
Freedom from...
And freedom from ... the *HELL-HOLE* that the American neocon maniacs have made of your country.
Now THAT is some sort of freedom indeed !!
May Allah be with you and protect you, dear tormented brothers and sisters of Iraq.
Come on you guys....it's much worse than it seems. The average American does not care about our soldiers or the war. It's pathetic how flag waving and goose bump songs keep Americans content to see other peoples kids die for a terrible, ignorant, and impetuous descision.
The darkness of the Bush administration will burden America for a generation...or two.
Not to mention the one million dead civilians from this war. And then all the complaints about immigrants...we ruin their countries and then let a few in and then complain that they are getting services that they actually never get.
I hate this country.
Kucinich is only hope. But, he cannot bring back the dead.
There already is an Iraqi expat community here. I think we can afford to let in over 7,000 considering we wrecked thier country and all. We let in a lot more Vietnamese during the Vietnam war then we let in Iraqis during the two wars with Iraq thus far.
there ain't gonna be no move to let thousands of iraqis into this country. are you joking? people are ready to shoot jose and fidel down the street, and you want to throw them ahmed & saddam? like i said in my previous post, americans think iraqis are killing iraqis, so why the hell should the US help them?
one major problem is the way the MS/Corp M presents the rape of iraq you'd think the biggest killer & refugee creator was sectarian violence, not the US army. you know, arabs killing arabs while whitey keeps the peace. the invasion isn't creating the refugee problem, it's not US soldiers killing the overwhelming majority of iraqis. i had to explain this to my brother last night, a very astute reader of politics, but who gets his iraq news solely from NYTimes, WaPo, CNN, etc. so of course he's arguing "we can't leave! they'll all kill each other and iran will take over!"
just remember this, and beat it into your neighbor's heads:
The US is killing the Iraqis. The US is creating the refugee crisis. most of this sectarian crap would stop overnight if we'd just leave.
Maybe if we took in a few hundred thousand refugees from this war, more Americans would see the war in a different perspective.
Since the start of the war the US has only granted asylum to 190 Iraqi citizens. Under pressure from human rights group Bush is now allowing 7,000 persons to be granted asylum in the US of A. Looking at the numbers of refugees Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states are taking in and we are not granting them any aid to help the refugees. We should be so ashamed. I am outraged as the number of asyleess in the US is a drop in the bucket especially because we are to blame for the destruction of a soverign nation!!!!! Iraqis who worked with the CPA now stand to lose their lives because anyone affiliated with the US gets targeted by insurgents we should be granting these people asylum. There's blood on our hands! No one even mentions the situation for Afghans. Afghans were the other largest refugee population in the greater Middle East. Right now we are offering very few Afghans asylum as Bush and co still need to present the situation there as some sort of smashing success story. Ughh.
The statistics
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/asylum/asylum_13_iraqi_refugees.asp
Call your Senators and Representatives today. The American people are not AmeriKKKans!
I'd never have thought that Iraqis would leave Bush's paradise. I mean aren't they supposed to be better off now that the U.S. took over than they were under Saddam's leadership? LOL
Well there's a shocker, lets see;
1) Live under a tyrant with one of the best health system and education systems in the world.
2) or be murdered or maimed by AmeriKKKan soldiers, I mean liberators...
3) or leave the country and go somewhere there are no AmeriKKKan soldiers..
kinda easy answer..
FOUR MILLION !!!!! talk about the Bush/Cheney legacy hopefully will never be in doubt. One word. "OBSCENE"
"The United States announced it was giving 30 million dollars to the joint UNHCR-UNICEF education initiative". "We encourage all potential donors to support us in this appeal", Ellen Sauerbrey, US Assistant secretary for populations, refugees, and migration..
Dick Cheney's retirement package from Halliburton in 2000 was 33.7 Million dollars. What is the current CEO's salary at Hallibuton? Blackwater? Raytheon? etc, most "funded" by tax dollars.
It's so incomprehensible. We spend BILLIONS to kill, cause untold suffering, create a massive refugee problem with no medical supplies, inadequate food and water. The innocent suffer and die from disgusting US Corporate Imperial ambitions and we casually throw in 30 million to UNICEF? with an appeal to donors?
It's absolutely sickening! We reward the fat, bloated, overstuffed, corporate war mongers while the innocent suffer and die. Makes me want to believe in some form of divine justice somewhere in this universe.