Iraqi minister: 200,000 Iraqi immigrants to Europe since the summer of last year

The Iraqi Minister of Displacement and Migration Jassim Mohammed said yesterday that up to 200,000 Iraqis have migrated to Europe since the summer of last year, when Daesh swept through the north and west of the country.

In a press conference held in Baghdad, and attended by Turkey’s Anadolu agency, Mohammed explained that his ministry “does not have accurate figures for the number of those who have emigrated to European countries fleeing the war.”

He pointed out that the estimated figures of the Iraqi embassies in European countries indicate that the number of emigrated Iraqis is between 150, 000 to 200,000 people.

Thousands of Iraqis have joined the wave of unprecedented migration to European countries in recent months to escape the war that has been raging for over a year between the Iraqi forces and their allied militias against Daesh.

This number represents only a fraction of those Iraqis who were forced to leave their homes and flee to safer areas in the country where their number amounts to an estimated 3.2 million displaced people.

Mohammed claims that his ministry needs three trillion Iraqi dinars (about $2.8 billion) to cover the needs of displaced people living in camps which were often set up in haste and are suffering from a chronic lack of essential services.

The Iraqi minister pointed out that the Iraqi government has allocated one trillion dinars for his ministry in this year’s budget, but that the ministry has only received 60 per cent of this figure till this day, the delay having a negative impact on providing for the needs of the displaced people.