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Iraq: The World's Fastest Growing Displacement Crisis

03/22/2007

Iraq: The World's Fastest Growing Displacement Crisis

Cover of The World's Fastest Growing Displacement Crisis

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The World's Fastest Growing Displacement Crisis:
Displaced People Inside Iraq Receiving Inadequate Assistance

Four years after the U.S. launched its attack against Iraq, the civil war there has produced a humanitarian crisis marked by the world’s fastest growing refugee and internally displaced populations. But Iraq, Washington and the U.N. do not acknowledge the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis. This has led to an inadequate response, both within Iraq and in the region.

While Iraqis are flooding into neighboring countries — some two million have taken refuge outside Iraq — the population of internally displaced, while far less visible, is just as desperate and growing just as fast. The UN estimates that 1.9 million are displaced within Iraq. This includes 1 million people who had been forced from their homes before 2003 and an additional 727,000 displaced since the February bombing of Samarra. The agency is preparing for internal displacement to increase by as much as one million more people this year.

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