Iraq: Political wrangling leaves around 2.8 million displaced Iraqis with no durable solutions in sight

Seven years after the March 2003 US-led invasion, Iraq remains deeply divided. Iraqis have been internally displaced in three periods: either under the former Ba’ath government; from the March 2003 invasion until the February 2006 Samarra bombing; and since then. Today, one in ten Iraqi is still internally displaced, totalling 2.8 million people. They face continuing threats to their physical security and difficulties accessing basic necessities and essential services.

Today, the governorates and neighbourhoods which were most affected by displacement are now more ethnically or religiously homogenous than at any time in Iraq’s history. Tensions have remained high yet increasingly confined to the disputed areas of the ethnically diverse northern governorates of Kirkuk and Ninawa. Though it remains fragile, security has to some extent improved, and as a result there has been little new displacement outside disputed northern areas since 2009. However, the improvement in security is linked to the major political parties eschewing violence for political competition which in turn has brought the state to a standstill. The government has proven unable to provide access to basic services to internally displaced people (IDPs), most of whom are either single women, children or elderly people.

In Diyala and Baghdad, where the Iraqi government and its UN partners have taken steps to address displacement, there was an encouraging rate of returns in late 2009; however the number of returns has dropped in 2010, with would-be returnees concerned about the political uncertainty and poor public services as well as insecurity.

2010 has been an electoral year, but as of December a government was still to be formed. This political stalemate, the result of entrenched sectarianism and the altered demo-graphics of Iraq, has left little room for reconciliation and effective policy-making to sup-port durable solutions for IDPs. The National Policy on Displacement is yet to be passed into law, and there has been no support for IDPs seeking to integrate locally or resettle elsewhere.