Amnesty International: World governments failing Iraqi refugees

June 15, 2008

Amnesty International Press Release
June 15, 2008

The international community is evading its responsibility towards refugees from Iraq by promoting a false picture of the security situation in Iraq when the country is neither safe nor suitable for return, Amnesty International said today.

In its new report, Rhetoric and reality: the Iraqi refugee crisis, which is based on recent research and interviews with Iraqi refugees, the organization said that the world’s richest states are failing to provide the necessary assistance to Iraqi refugees, most of whom are plunged in despair and hurtling towards destitution.
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The Independent: “Iraqi refugee crisis grows as West turns its back”

June 15, 2008

With millions displaced, foreign countries take increasingly hardline stance

By Kim Sengupta
Sunday, 15 June 2008
The Independent (U.K.)

…The Iraqi diaspora is now one of the largest in modern times, with more than two million people fleeing abroad. But the ferocious strife and the breakdown in law and order have led to another wave of about 2.7 million fleeing their homes but unable to escape the country. Many of these have moved to Baghdad, putting further strain on a shattered infrastructure and adding to the city’s sectarian tensions. The situation in terms of numbers and conditions for the displaced people has deteriorated dramatically in the past two years, Amnesty [International] claims.

Full article @ The Independent

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SF Chron: “Iraqi exiles take extreme measures to survive”

March 21, 2008

Julien Barnes-Dacey, Chronicle Foreign Service
Friday, March 21, 2008

“People are finding themselves in extreme situations and at the worst end we’re seeing child labor, early marriage and survival sex,” U.N. spokeswoman Sybella Wilkes said. “This is something that these families would never have resorted to in Iraq. They’re facing drastic measures in order to keep some semblance of quality of life.”

The United Nations estimates that more than 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland, with more than 700,000 and 1.2 million pouring into neighboring Jordan and Syria, respectively. In January, the U.N. refugee agency appealed for $261 million for programs to “support the most vulnerable of the uprooted inside and outside Iraq.”

Full article @ San Francisco Chronicle

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Salon.com: “Unveiling Iraq’s teenage prostitutes”

June 24, 2005

Fleeing their war-torn homes, Iraqi girls are selling their bodies in Syria to support their families.

Joshua E.S. Phillips
Jun 24, 2005

The story of a Sunni girl from Fallujah selling herself in a Damascus nightclub represents startling new fallout from the Iraq war, one human rights organizations and experts are only beginning to address. An increasing number of young Iraqi women and girls who fled Iraq during the turmoil are turning to prostitution in Syria, although there are no reliable statistics on how many girls are involved…The U.S. State Department’s 2005 “Trafficking in Persons Report” acknowledges the problem, but officials have no clear sense of its magnitude.

Full article @ Salon.com

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