IRAQ: Iraqi refugees face urban challenges
DAMASCUS, 4 August 2009 (IRIN) - Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon may be missing out on vital assistance because of problems tracing them in the cities, says the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in a report, Surviving in the City.
"The report notes the challenges UNHCR faces in dealing with the refugees who settled in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, Amman in Jordan and Beirut in Lebanon."
Most of the refugees fled after 2006 when sectarian violence broke out in Iraq, and settled in towns and cities - including places not covered by the report.
"Reaching the Iraqi refugees is much more complex in large cities," said Abeer Etefa, UNHCR spokeswoman for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. "In a camp they are all within our control. We are concerned that the most vulnerable refugees are not being assisted because they cannot reach us."
The vulnerabilities cited by UNHCR include poverty, resorting to dangerous activities such as prostitution, physical and mental disabilities, and female-headed households whose main breadwinner has been killed in Iraq.
Etefa says the number of vulnerable refugees is rising. "Most of the Iraqi refugees could afford to settle in cities because they came with savings," she said. However, "those are now running out and many are struggling to survive".
Ghanea, 70, and her husband Hamid, 81, fled to Damascus from Baghdad at the end of 2008, because of Hamid's heart condition. Months later they visited the UNHCR centre in Duma, on the outskirts of Damascus, for the first time.
"We did not go earlier because the centre is far from our home," said Ghanea. "We spent the last of our money on the taxi to this centre so I don't know how we will pay our rent."
Reaching the vulnerable
"Our main approach has been to use the refugee community as they have better access to and knowledge of their fellow refugees," said Etefa.
A volunteer outreach programme in Syria trained Iraqi women to identify vulnerable people in their communities. The women go house to house, informing refugees of available support and notifying UNHCR of those needing assistance.
A similar strategy has been developed in Egypt and Lebanon.
Despite these steps, the number of refugees registered with UNHCR remains lower than the numbers estimated to reside across the MENA region.
In Syria, just over 200,000 Iraqi refugees are registered with UNHCR out of the 1.2 million estimated to live there by the World Refugee Report 2009, published by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in June.
"In part this is because of people who are hard to reach," said Etefa. "But we cannot assist everyone and we do not expect every refugee to register with us - some do not see what we offer as suitable for them."
However, some NGOs suspect the estimated numbers are inflated and the report adds that many Iraqis included in the figures were already settled in other countries, voluntarily seeking opportunities there.
Urban challenges
The urban setting poses further challenges. For refugees these include high living costs - most of their money goes on shelter, says UNHCR; travelling long distances to reach registration centres, and problems accessing health and education services.
For UNHCR, difficulties include being more closely monitored by the host states than they would be when running camps and the difficulty in keeping refugees informed and thereby managing their expectations.
New strategies have been developed to address these problems. The report praises the use of mobile phone text messages in Syria - which hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees - to notify them of food distributions, and the issuing of ATM cards to allow refugees receiving cash assistance to withdraw the money locally rather than travelling to a UNHCR point.
The agency also provides funds to local health and education facilities to increase their capacity to cover Iraqis and mobile registration centres are employed in Syria to reach refugees who are continually moving in search of lower rents.
The urban setting has positive effects too. "It allows for better integration into the community and the chance to find work in the informal sector," says Etefa.
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