ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - At least 500 Yazidi displaced persons returned to their homes in Sinjar from two camps in Duhok province as part of a plan by the Iraqi government to close down all IDP camps across Iraq, Evan Faeq, Iraq’s migration minister, announced on Thursday. 

 

“As part of the Iraqi government’s efforts to return the displaced to their homes, a total of 326 Yazidi IDPs left Mam Rashan camp in Duhok province and returned to their hometown Sinjar,” Faeq said in a statement, adding it was done in coordination with the local authorities of Duhok province and the International Organization of Migration (IOM).

 

Faeq added another 181 Yazidi IDPs on Thursday returned to Sinjar from Duhok province's Sheikhan IDP camp. 

   

Following the ISIS attack on Sinjar in August 2014, thousands of Yazidis were forced to flee their homes in hopes of escaping the militant group’s atrocities.

 

Over ten years on, thousands of Yazidis remain missing, and tens of thousands of others are unwilling to return to their homes due to security concerns exacerbated by a lack of services and reconstruction.

 

On Tuesday, another 367 Yazidi Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) returned to Sinjar from Mam Rashan camp. 

 

The total number of IDPs is estimated to be between 800,000 and one million, residing in various regions including the Kurdistan Region’s camps, Nineveh, Anbar, and the outskirts of Baghdad.

 

To encourage returns, the ministry has offered aid and incentives since January 2024, including a one-time payment of four million Iraqi dinars per family, potential government employment, social security benefits, and interest-free loans for small businesses.

 

The gradual return of Yazidis to Sinjar comes less than two weeks until a general population census across Iraq. 

 

Yazidi members of the Iraqi parliament in early October expressed their opposition to the upcoming national census, calling for its delay until the return of internally displaced persons and the stabilization of some cities.

 

“We are not in favor of a census that legitimizes the demographic change of constitutional rights and destroyed areas,” Mohammed Khalil, a Yazidi lawmaker from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), had said.

  

He stressed that a population count at this time would result in “inaccurate” data, especially in Sinjar and the Nineveh plains, which he said have seen the return of only 50 percent of their original populations.

 

Though Baghdad had set July 30 as the deadline for the closure of the entire IDP camps across the Kurdistan Region, the Kurdish government repeatedly announced it was unwilling to forcibly close down the camps, a decision pushing the Iraqi migration minister Faeq to lodge a complaint against Erbil.