Roj Bash Kurdistan

UNHCR: Only solution for Iranian Kurdish refugees is resettlement in Erbil

The Associated Press / Amman


Resettlement in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil is the only solution for 29 Iranian Kurdish refugee families living just inside Iraq near the Jordanian border, the United Nations refugee agency said Monday.

Anne-Marie Deutschlander, acting director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Amman, told reporters that an agreement had been reached with local Kurdish authorities to resettle the refugees in Erbil as "the only solution open" to them.

"There is no chance whatsoever for those refugees to enter Jordan," Deutschlander said in a statement carried by the official Petra news agency.

Jordan has refused to allow entry to the refugees, and Deutschlander added that UNHCR "is unable to freely access those residing outside Jordanian borders."

She said the UN refugee agency struck a deal with Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to allow the families to reside permanently in the Kawa camp outside Irbil as of September 2005.

The Kawa camp is expected to be transformed into a residential area, thereby changing the families' status from refugees to settled people.

UNHCR said each family would receive $400 to cover their settlement needs.

The 29 families fled al-Tash refugee camp in the Ramadi area of western Iraq in January 2005 due to insurgent threats and settled in a location near the Jordanian-Iraqi border.

Some 13,000 Iranian Kurds lived in al-Tash for about 20 years, many having fled Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Deutschlander said the refugees had hoped to enter Jordan and to be granted resettlement in a third country, preferably in the West. Last year, more than 1,200 other Iranian Kurds who had lived in the no man's land straddling the borders of Jordan and Iraq were granted asylum in mainly Scandinavian countries.

She added that the refugees could not seek resettlement in Jordan because of a government decision to close a refugee camp in Ruweishid, 350 kilometers east of Amman, in September.

UNHCR in Jordan deals with 1,200 refugees, including 700 Iraqis, according to Petra.

Piling wrote:weird situation... SOuthern Kurdistan is fortunately a shelter for Kurds. But a bit hypocrit to NU to ask Kurds to welcome refugees treating with Kurdistan as an independant state (Baghdad has nothing to do in that deal apparently);

In the same time NU are far to recognize the right for Kurds to be independant. I mean a free Kurdistan is OK for NU when it allows to get rid of refugees burden, but for giving them a seat in NU it is another problem...