ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Yezidi residents of camps for the displaced are bearing the brunt of an exceptionally cold winter spell hitting parts of the Kurdistan Region and Iraq.
Snowfall has blanketed parts of the country as far south as Baghdad in the last week. Those in temporary shelters across the country are exceptionally vulnerable to the adverse weather conditions.
Video posted to social media from Sardasht camp atop Mount Shingal show flimsy tent structures billowing in blizzard wind and snow.
Around 360,000 of Iraq’s remaining 400,000 Yezidis are internally displaced. The ethnoreligious minority was targeted with particular brutality by the Islamic State group (ISIS) when the jihadists took over vast swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Five winters later, Yezidis still reside in temporary structures in IDP camps.
About 11,000 Yezidis live at Bajed Kandala camp in the mountainous Kurdistan Region province of Duhok. Tents are collapsing under the heavy snow, Salih Hamo, team leader of the Kurdish-Swedish NGO Joint Help for Kurdistan, told Rudaw English on Saturday.
The NGO runs a health center for camp residents, the roof of which has collapsed under the weight of the snow. Hamo described the clinic’s condition as an “emergency”.
The clinic always experiences a winter seasonal spike in patients, Hamo said, but the extreme weather has exacerbated conditions further.
“During the cold months there is already a heavy load on the clinics because of an increase in patients, especially small children due to infections,” Hamo explained.
“We have been unable to obtain materials from outside the camp and hospital referrals are stuck due to the traffic conditions,” he added.
Though blizzards are no longer battering Bajed Kandala, temperatures frequently below freezing continue to bite. Snowfall has caused damage to the camp’s electricity supply, making it even harder to generate heat.
The clinic has since been moved to two cabins that once belonged to another NGO working at the camp, but they lack permanent electricity and heating.
Sharia camp in Duhok province is also home to displaced Yezidis. Schooling at the camp has been interrupted by the weather conditions and road access hindered by snowfall, camp residents told Rudaw reporter Hunar Rasheed earlier this week.
The camp receives assistance from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s Board of Relief and Humanities Affairs, according to Rasheed, which distributes 150 litres of heating oil per family.
The camp suffers from frequent power cuts and limited generator power.
Camps in Iraqi government-controlled Nineveh province, including Sardasht, have been receiving extra heating oil provisions to cope with the cold weather, as well as blankets and insulation carpeting to help make the tents warmer, Aliya Hussein, the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displaced representative to the KRG, told Rudaw English in an interview on Saturday.
Hussein said displaced people in Iraq are no longer an international priority, as world attention turns to humanitarian disasters in Libya, Sudan, and Yemen. Foreign officials say Iraq is “rich” and ought to be capable of taking care of its displaced people, she said.
Kawergosk refugee camp is home to refugees predominantly from northeast Syria. Located approximately 30 kilometres from Erbil, the province has not seen the same extreme weather as Sardasht or Duhok province camps, camp manager Nizar Salih Hamo told Rudaw English on Saturday.
Asked about the structures where families are sheltered, Hamo said tents are being upgraded according to a plan by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). All tents across four Erbil province camps are to be upgraded, Hamo said.
Tent upgrades will not translate into a more permanent situation for residents, he said. But with little done to ensure the safety, security, and prosperity of those who move back to their places of origin, these temporary structures are becoming increasingly permanent homes whose precariousness exposes long-suffering inhabitants to the elements.
With additional reporting by Karwan Faidhi Dri
