Financial compensation for families affected by Sharia fire: Iraqi migration ministry

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement has said that families affected by Friday’s fire at Duhok’s Sharia IDP camp will be compensated up to one million Iraqi dinars ($685).

“The compensation amount ranges from 500,000 dinars ($342) to one million dinars for each family, in addition to distributing mattresses, blankets and clothes for those affected,” ministry spokesperson Ali Abbas Jahangi told Iraqi state media on Saturday.

The compensation will be distributed “in the next few days,” he added.

Sharia camp is home to displaced Yazidis – an ethnoreligious minority who fled their hometown Shingal after they were targeted with particular brutality by the Islamic State group (ISIS), when the jihadists took over vast swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
 
A fire, said to be caused by an electrical problem, ripped through the camp on Friday, burning nearly 400 tents. Almost 1,000 people from more than 130 families were affected by the fire, Karwan Zaki Atroshi, coordinator for camps in Duhok, told Rudaw English on Saturday, adding that the damages are still being assessed.

Iraq’s Minister of Migration and Displacement Evan Jabro told Rudaw on Friday that she had contacted Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi for compensation and aid for the affected families. 

She added that the ministry “cannot pressure the displaced to return to their homes if there are no services provided there. Where should people return back to if their houses are destroyed and there isn’t a place they can reside in?” 

The ministry has previously been critcised for closing almost all camps across federal Iraq, prompting concern from human rights groups.