Freedom on the March
Posted on | June 7, 2007
Over four million Iraqis have been displaced by war and other violence–that’s one-sixth of the country’s pre-war population (and doesn’t include the half-million or more killed).
GENEVA - More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday, warning that the figure will continue to rise.
The number of Iraqis who have fled the country as refugees has risen to 2.2 million, said Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. A further 2 million have been driven from their homes but remain within the country, increasingly in “impoverished shanty towns,” she said.
Pagonis said UNHCR is receiving “disturbing reports” of regional authorities doing little to provide displaced people with food, shelter and other basic services.
“Individual governorates inside Iraq are becoming overwhelmed by the needs of the displaced,” Pagonis told reporters in Geneva, where UNHCR has its headquarters.
More than half of Iraq’s 18 governorates are preventing displaced people from entering their territories, either by stopping them at checkpoints or by refusing to register them for food aid and other basic services.
But at least it’s not Saddam Hussein driving out millions. That’s got to be some comfort to them, right?
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