A Soldier’s Promise and an Iraqi Family’s Journey to the US
The Iraqi man known as “Roy,” an interpreter for US troops. In 2008, he was killed, along with six US soldiers, by a bomb in Iraq. His family recently arrived to California after receiving threats for Roy’s work with the US. I’m sitting in a San Diego café with former US Army captain Blake Hall. In just an hour, we’ll head to the airport to greet the p…
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Syrian conflict settles old scores
Iraqis with old vendettas have taken advantage of the chaos and instability in Syria to pursue Iraqi refugees there, with a string of kidnappings in recent months, according to an official with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). “We’ve seen a rise in serious protection incidents,” said Paul Stromberg, deputy representative of the UNCHR in Syria. “There …
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Refugees can’t be forced home
A new policy in Iraq has forced Denmark to stop its practice of repatriating Iraqi refugees against their will. Thousands of Iraqis fled their country to Europe after the US-led invasion in 2003. Since 2009, the numbers of Iraqi asylum seekers in Danish refugee centres has fallen drastically because many of them have been repatriated. But the gove…
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Iraq refuses back asylum seekers
The Iraqi parliament has blocked the repatriation of thousands of asylum seekers who have lost the right to remain in Britain. It has banned the forced return from Europe of tens of thousands of Iraqis and threatened to fine airlines that deliver deportees. Failed asylum seekers have already been turned back at the border, said the refugee support g…
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Syria’s forgotten refugees
It was 21 February 2006. The date is etched in Samia’s* mind. She was in her kitchen making tea for her brother’s family, who was visiting her at her home in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, when gunfire broke out in the sitting room. “It was as if there was a war in my home,” she recounted. She could not move; could not breathe; could not do anything. …
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Refugees in a Desperate Limbo
Iraqi refugee women in Jordan offer an example of hope and resilience. But their desperate limbo is heartbreaking for Samia Qumri to witness in her work for the Collateral Repair Project, a charity started in 2004. Nine years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad in April 2004, the refugee population here offers a rebuke to th…
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In Syria: The Loss of A Last Refuge
In 2008, Iraqi activist and journalist Hana Ibrahim fled from her home in Baghdad to Damascus, taking her two children with her. They had grown up under sanctions and war, and had as such never enjoyed the level of security they found in Syria. But even that has become a thing of the past. “For years my daughter couldn’t go out alone, because the streets h…
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Syria Fears Keep Region on Edge
Abu Ali fled his life as a Shiite cleric and student in Homs, the besieged Syrian city at the center of an increasingly bloody uprising, but it was not the government he feared. It was the rebels, who he said killed three of his cousins in December and dumped a body in the family garbage bin. “I can’t be in Homs because I will get killed there,” he said fr…
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Iraqi Refugees at Risk of Brain Disorders
New research suggests that a high number of Iraqi refugees are affected by brain and nervous system disorders, including those who are victims of torture and the disabled. The late-breaking research will be presented at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology , April 9 – 16, 2011, in Honolulu. The United Nations estimates that there are…
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IRAQ: Funding hits IDP Returnees
Iraqi government plans for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees may not be fully implemented this year because of a funding shortfall, says Deputy Minister for Displacement and Migration Azhar Al-Mousawi.“We have set [up] a lot of big projects this year, but the ministry - according to the allocated budget - may not be able to implement its com…
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Iraq urged to stop deportation refugees
Amnesty International has urged the Iraqi authorities to prevent the forcible return to Iran of several members of the Ahwazi Arab minority amid fears that they would be at serious risk of torture and other human rights violations in Iran. Two recognized refugees, Shahhed Abdulhussain Abbas Allami and Saleh Jasim Mohammed al-Hamid, are currently being detai…
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Iraqi refugees need a lifeline
It has been a brutal and violent few weeks for Iraqis. At the end of October, over 50 Christian Iraqis were massacred at a church in Baghdad. Since then, organized attacks on Christian Iraqis have escalated throughout the country. This is not the beginning of such persecution: of the estimated 1.2 million Christians in Iraq in 2003, only approximately 600,0…
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IRAQ: Enforced disappearances
Asma Al-Haidari, an Amman-based Iraqi human rights analyst and advocate, says the phenomenon of enforced disappearances in Iraq touches the whole population, irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity or religious belief. The number of missing persons in Iraq ranges from 250,000 to over one million, according to the International Commission on Missing Persons (…
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