Abadi: Iraq has five million IDPs, refugees from Syria, 50% repatriated

Kuwait (IraqiNews.com) Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has said that Iraq has five million internally displaced persons, in addition to refugees from Syria. More than half of them were repatriated.

During his speech at the Kuwait International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq on Wednesday, Abadi said, “there are more than five million internally displaced persons in Iraq. There are also refugees from Syria. The government managed to repatriate more than half of them at their regions.”

Earlier today, the Migration and Displacement Ministry said three million refugees were returned back to their liberated regions in provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin and Nineveh except for Mosul’s Old City as most of the houses were destroyed during the offensives.

Speaking to the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, Sattar Nuruz, the ministry spokesperson, expressed hopes that the repatriation rates go higher “after getting the allocations from the donors conference.”

Thousands of families left their homes after IS controlled large areas of the country in 2014. The displacement rate increased as military operations were launched to retake the cities occupied by the militant group.

Iraqi officials previously said that the reconstruction of Iraq, in wake of a three-year war against Islamic State militants, requires US$88.2 billion and giving priority to the housing issue.
In December, the ministry estimated the number of IDPs at five million saying that 45 percent of them returned back home.