Iraqi Deputy Minister of Construction, Housing, Municipalities and General Works Dara Reshid told Sputnik that the fact that Iraq had over 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDP) living in temporary camps was an embarrassment for the country, which is now focused on returning them home.
"Our short-term plan is how to bring back IDPs back to their places of origin. That includes giving them infrastructure, schools, medical centers, water and sanitation. This is the most important thing that IDPs come back. This is very important for us, because at the moment we have more than 1.5 million IDPs still at camps, it's a humiliation for our nation," Reshid said on the sidelines of the Iraq Petroleum conference in London.
The deputy minister noted that Iraq needed money to rebuild infrastructure now that the Islamic State (IS terrorist group, banned in Russia) was defeated.
"Now, we have a new era to develop socially, economically and politically. For us, it is very important to have enough money to do the job," Reshid said.
Iraq is known to be suffering from one of the most acute displacement problems in the world, with people being driven out of their homes by armed conflicts and natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, for decades. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, there were almost 2 million IDPs in Iraq as of late 2018.
The most recent wave of displacements began when the IS captured significant territories in Iraq in 2014. Three years later, Iraqi authorities announced that the terrorist group had been driven out of the country. Iraqi forces now continue to carry out counterterrorism operations against IS cells with the help of the international coalition.
SOURCE: Urdu Post
