Half a Million Displaced Iraqis Face Grim Future In Squalid Squatter Camps

The alarming spread of illegal squatter settlements has aid groups fearful of a looming social crisis, one which a senior United Nations official considers "the greatest humanitarian problem facing Iraq."

Recent reports from two international agencies found that of Iraq's 1.5 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, at least 500,000 have been forced to dwell in squalid squatter camps without access to health care or public services.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, has recorded a sharp increase in squatters since 2009, and activists are demanding the United States and UN stem the problem before it surges out of control.

"We registered 160,000 [squatters] in Baghdad a year ago and this March the number was up to 260,000. This is only for Baghdad, we haven't published figures for the whole country yet but it's at least up from 400,000 to 500,000 for the time being," Daniel Endres, Iraq representative of UNHCR, said.

Interviews by IWPR confirmed the rising numbers of squatter settlements and found that conditions in the camps continue to deteriorate as numbers swell. Although IDPs who fled their homes due to war and sectarian conflict have long been a problem in Iraq, many who spoke to IWPR said they had sheltered in camps due to extreme poverty and joblessness.

"The problem appears to be growing for a number of new reasons, among them the drought and the many people who have lost their livelihoods. We have also found that many refugees who returned recently from other countries have ended up in camps," Endres said.

"The guiding principles of defining an IDP are broad: you don't have to be displaced just by war to be an IDP. It can be any event that has thrown you out of your normal life and created a destitute or unlivable situation."

The type of settlement that constitutes a squatter camp is also loosely defined. According to humanitarian groups, the term generally refers to anyone residing on land which they have no title or permission to live on.

The larger camps occupy public land, government buildings and former military compounds in Baghdad; the biggest of these is the heaving al-Rasheed camp, a former base for Saddam Hussein's army, in which thousands of families live on roughly roughly 1,200 hectares of land.

Other large encampments are expanding on the outskirts of the Kadhemiya district in north Baghdad, and Karada in the city's southern fringe. The Sadr City area is home to several sprawling squatter settlements.

Yet other camps continue to spring up, some are large while others consist of small groups of families huddled in makeshift shelters of cloth, mud and scrap metal on empty or abandoned lots. To the displeasure of city officials, some of Baghdad's parks, parking lots and even traffic islands have become impoverished tent communities.

In Diyala province, which experienced one of the greatest population upheavals, thousands of families have built shelters on or near their homes which were destroyed by war. Even in the relatively stable Kurdistan region, camps for IDPs and jobless migrants can be found near the main cities.

A Refugees International report released March 17 claimed, "The settlements all lack basic services, including water, sanitation and electricity and are built in precarious places -- under bridges, alongside railroad tracks and amongst garbage dumps."

Elizabeth Campbell, a senior advocate for Refugees International who co-authored the March report, along with journalist Nir Rosen conducted field research earlier this year in more than 20 different settlements in the provinces of Baghdad, Diyala and Salahadin.

"We had limited time so we focused on the camps that were visible to us. But they are not hard to find once you start looking. Had we stayed [in Iraq] we would have found many more," said Campbell, who added that establishing a comprehensive list of the camps is the first step to addressing the problem of poor conditions and, eventually, resettlement.