UN sounds crisis warning on Iraq refugees

EXODUS of residents fleeing violence in Iraq to neighbouring countries has created a "humanitarian crisis," a conference in Jordan has heard.
Estimates put the number of war displaced persons from Iraq at more than two million.
The United Nations (UN) said about 50,000 more people leave Iraq monthly, and most of them headed to Jordan and Syria, which now want international help to ease the burden on their services.
The UN refugee agency has said the mass displacement is threatening the region's stability.
It described the wave of displacement sparked by the Iraq war as the biggest in the Middle East since 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the newly created Israel.
Muhammad Hajj Hamoud, secretary-general of Iraq's Foreign Ministry, addressing the summit for Iraq's neighbours, the UN, United States (U.S.) and Britain yesterday said: "The humanitarian duty calls upon all of us to look more seriously at the size of the problem and acknowledge that there is a real humanitarian crisis."
He said that efforts to stem the flow of refugees by Iraq's neighbours - who now impose tougher entry restrictions - resulted in cases of mistreatment at border crossings.
The Jordanian delegate, for his part, focused on security issues, warning that background checks were needed before people were allowed to stay.
One refugee in Jordan, grandmother Najla Abda Karim Saleh, fled with her son and daughter. Another daughter was killed in sectarian violence.
A tearful Saleh told the British Broadcasting Corporation(BBC) that she wanted help from the UN to bring the her four grandchildren to safety in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
"We have lost (our) house, we are lost, my daughter is lost, my son (is) lost... help this family please," she wept.
The UN refugee agency earlier this month doubled its annual appeal for funding to help uprooted Iraqis to $123million to boost medical care, shelter and other support.
Jordan and Syria want some assurance that the Iraqis will either eventually return to their homeland or be resettled elsewhere.
Egypt and Lebanon have also received thousands of Iraqis.
UN Deputy High Commissioner for refugees Craig Johnstone, yesterday called for international assistance, since Syria and Jordan had few resources to cope with the influx.
"The international community, I think, has neglected the plight of the refugees from Iraq so far, but they are beginning to act," Johnstone told the BBC.
Jordan in May, said hosting the Iraqis was costing the desert kingdom about $1bn a year.
The UN says Syria hosts 1.4 million displaced Iraqis, and Jordan 750,000.
In Jordan, clinics provide free immunisation to Iraqi children, but not full health-care services.
Government schools, already stretched to the maximum, only allow a small portion of Iraqi children with residency permits to attend.
Syria provides greater services to the Iraqis, but even there the UN says that only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugee children there are able to attend school.
The UN refugee agency says it hopes to find a permanent home for a total of 20,000 Iraqi exiles by the end of the year.
Though the U.S. President George W. Bush administration earlier in the year announced that it would absorb 7,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September, it has accepted just 133 in the past nine months due to stringent security measures.

http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/world/article01