UN Urges More Help for Fleeing Iraqis
    By Peter Capella
    Agency France-Presse

    Tuesday 17 April 2007

    Geneva - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday urged countries to bolster aid for Iraqi refugees and to keep their borders open to the growing exodus, amid warnings that hosts Jordan and Syria were overstretched.

    His appeal came at a two-day UN conference on the plight of some four million Iraqis who have fled their homes, including nearly 800,000 since sectarian violence intensified in Iraq just over a year ago.

    Aid agencies warned that legal escape routes for refugees were being cut off by several nations just as regional authorities inside Iraq started to turn away displaced people, potentially fuelling the exodus from the country.

    "I hope this conference will galvanise international support to provide them with more protection and assistance and I hope it will mobilise resources in establishing much needed protection space," Ban Ki-moon said in a video message.

    "For neighbouring countries this means keeping borders open and upholding the principle of no forced return," he added, while also extending his appeal to more distant asylum countries.

    Jordan and Syria together host nearly two million Iraqi refugees out of a total of some four million displaced by the current conflict and Saddam Hussein's regime.

    The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned that hospitals, clinics and schools in the two countries "have now reached their limits".

    It appealed for 15 million dollars (11.1 million euros) in funding to help 100,000 Iraqi refugee families there.

    Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari pledged 25 million dollars to help neighbouring countries shoulder the refugee burden, but underlined that the situation could only be controlled with a halt to violence in Iraq.

    "It reminds the region, and the international community, why we all have a vested interest in helping achieve stability and peace in Iraq," he said.

    Up to 50,000 Iraqis flee sectarian violence every month, according to the UN, but a US official claimed numbers had "stabilised" in the past two months.

    UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres welcomed Jordan and Syria's "generosity" so far, underlining that they had provided refuge "without any meaningful support from outside".

    "It is time that the international community responded with genuine solidarity and unstinting aid to displaced Iraqis and to the states hosting them," he told the conference.

    Guterres also called for the voluntary resettlement of Iraqi refugees in third countries to spread the burden, but aid officials said that could only absorb small numbers. The United States is preparing to take in at least 7,000 Iraqis this year.

    The US-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the United States and Britain generated the conflict in Iraq and now must help the fleeing Iraqis.

    "The United States and the United Kingdom bear a particular responsibility to help people displaced in and out of Iraq," said Refugee Director Bill Frelick.

    HRW warned that Iraq's neighbours were "closing off escape routes" for refugees by introducing new restrictions, including a seven-billion-dollar high-tech barrier it says Saudi Arabia is building on its border with Iraq.

    The displacement includes 1.9 million within Iraq, according to the latest data released by the UNHCR.

    The UNHCR estimated earlier this year that nearly 800,000 Iraqis had fled their homes since sectarian violence involving Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities intensified in February 2006.

    About half of Iraq's 15 central and southern governorates were reportedly turning away displaced people arriving from other areas, raising the prospect that more would flee abroad, the International Organisation for Migration said.

    About 95 percent of Iraqi refugees are in the Middle East, but the number reaching industrialised countries, mainly Europe, surged by 77 percent (22,200) in 2006, according to UNHCR data.