The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
US$25m to
the UN, but that amount was “fairly minimal, given the resources
required,
and that it
has primary responsibility for the well-being of Iraq’s
citizens”.
780.
The IOM’s
review of displacement in Iraq in 2007 reported that displacement
had
slowed over
the course of the year, due to improved security in some areas and
the
“sectarian
homogenization” of previously mixed neighbourhoods: “in other
words, there
were fewer
and fewer people to force out”.453
Conditions
continued to deteriorate for the
2.4m IDPs
in Iraq.
781.
On 12 March
2008, a DFID official advised Mr Douglas Alexander, who
had
succeeded
Mr Benn as International Development Secretary, that the UN
estimated that
there were
now 2.2m IDPs in Iraq.454
The Iraqi
Government had recently announced
a US$40m
contribution to the UN’s US$265m Consolidated Appeal (which had
been
launched in
February), but was doing little to support vulnerable people inside
Iraq.
782.
DFID
contributed a further £29m to the international humanitarian
response
783.
A study by The
Brookings Institution-University of Bern Project on
Internal
Displacement,
published in December 2008, suggested that smaller minority groups
in
Iraq
comprised a disproportionately large percentage of displaced
people, due to the
harassment
they had experienced after 2003.456
The study
offered a comparison of the
estimated
numbers of minority groups in Iraq in 2003 and 2008:
Group
Christians
Jews
Mandaeans
Palestinians
Turkomans
Yazidis
2003
1.0 to
1.4m
A few
hundred
30,000
35,000
800,000
claimed
Not
known
2008
600,000 to
800,000
10 to
15
Fewer than
13,000
15,000
As low as
200,000
About
550,000
453
International
Organization for Migration, [undated], Iraq
Displacement 2007 Year in Review.
454
Minute DFID
[junior official] to PS/Secretary of State [DFID], 12 March 2008,
‘Iraq: Humanitarian
Assistance’.
455
Paper DFID,
4 November 2009, ‘Iraq – DFID Timeline and Financial Commitments:
2003 – 2009’.
456
The
Brookings Institution-University of Bern Project on Internal
Displacement, December 2008,
Minorities,
Displacement and Iraq’s Future.
322