"Minute percentage" of Iraq refugees coming home

[Barrett808]

Source: Reuters

"Minute percentage" of Iraq refugees coming home
10 Jan 2008 15:54:36 GMT
By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Iraqi refugees are beginning to trickle home from abroad and other areas inside Iraq, but they represent only a "minute percentage" of the more than 3 million who have fled sectarian violence, a migration watchdog said.

The International Organization for Migration said in a new report on Thursday that internal displacement had slowed in 2007 thanks to improved security, but also as a result of ethnically and religiously mixed neighbourhoods becoming more homogenous.

More than 2 million Iraqis fled to Syria and Jordan and 1.2 million were internally displaced following the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that triggered a wave of bloodletting between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims.

"Slightly more than half of the internally displaced plan to return home, but as displacement prolongs, this figure is likely to decline, potentially leading to the permanent segregation of communities in Iraq," the IOM said in its 2007 report on Iraq.

It said many of those coming home from abroad were returning to become internally displaced people (IDPs) because they could not safely go back to their home communities or their property had been occupied by others. Conditions continued to deteriorate for internally displaced Iraqs in 2007, with many living in substandard or overcrowded shelters, and only 22 percent of the 142,000 families assessed by the IOM reported regular access to food.

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