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IRAQ / DISPLACED POPULATION
STORY: IRAQ / DISPLACED POPULATION
TRT: 2.59
SOURCE: UNHCR
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /ARABIC /NATS
DATELINE: 19 JULY 2014, BAHARKE CAMP, ERBIL, IRAQ
1. Wide shot, pan right warehouse where 5,000 Iraqi IDPs live
2. Med shot, young boy picking up water and bread from distribution
3. Wide shot, people queuing at daily distribution
4. Wide shot, people sitting in their shelters inside the warehouse
5. Med shot, Iraqi displaced Yehya sitting down in his ‘area’ inside the warehouse
6. Close up, Yehya’s two daughters and son sitting down
7. Wide shot, families inside the warehouse
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Yehya, Displaced Iraqi:
“When we left Telafar, we felt like we left our homeland. Any person who gets used to a place or lives in a place for more than 20 years, they wish to die but leave their home. It’s a feeling I never experienced before. When I picked up my bag, things and ID ready to leave, I knew there would be no return. If there is, it would be with great difficulty.”
9. Wide shot, Yehya standing carrying his son
10. Med shot, man sitting down on the floor
11. Close up, man’s hand holding bead chain
12. Med shot, man sitting and waving a cardboard as a fan
13. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Yehya, Displaced Iraqi:
“The feeling of being a refugee is very difficult, more difficult than illness or even death. We haven’t been through anything like this before.”
14. Wide shot, warehouse’s interior
15. Med shot, young men lying on mattresses
16. Med shot, men talking
17. Med shot, two children playing on the ground
18. Med shot, Yehya playing with his son and daughter
19. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Yehya, Displaced Iraqi:
“I hope to get another opportunity to leave Iraq. I have tried it and every 4-5 years there are problems, deep and serious problems, not just something small. Conflicts happen in other countries but they get resolved, quickly, because people manage to reach a solution. Here we seem unable to agree.”
20. Med shot, Yehya talking to his children
21. Wide shot, warehouse’s interior
22. Wide shot, Yehya sitting in his ‘area’ inside the warehouse
As fighting in Iraq continues, so does the influx of people fleeing the conflict.
Some 300,000 Iraqis, by official count, have sought shelter in the comparatively peaceful Kurdistan region over the past month. Most fled violence in Iraq's second city of Mosul and surrounding areas.
A warehouse in the middle of empty wheatgrass fields became home to 5,000 Iraqis from the town of Telafar. Aid agencies provide basic facilities as well as meals to families living here, as they await transfer to other parts of Iraq that offered to house them.
Ten days ago 5,000 Iraqis displaced by fighting in Mosul and surrounding areas moved into this abandoned warehouse.
Yehya and his family were among them.
He fled his hometown of Telafar with his wife, four children and few belongings when their town was bombed by armed groups.
SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Yehya, Displaced Iraqi:
“When we left Telafar, we felt like we left our homeland. Any person who gets used to a place or lives in a place for more than 20 years, they wish to die but leave their home. It’s a feeling I never experienced before. When I picked up my bag, things and ID ready to leave, I knew there would be no return. If there is, it would be with great difficulty.”
Yehya and the rest of the families here are waiting to fly to other Iraqi cities,
Ones that offered to house them.
But being made to feel a ‘refugee’ in your own country is heart-breaking.
SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Yehya, Displaced Iraqi:
“The feeling of being a refugee is very difficult, more difficult than illness or even death. We haven’t been through anything like this before.”
In total, 300 thousand Iraqis have crossed into the northern region of Kurdistan since June this year.
Many are staying in schools, mosques and hotels.
Others in makeshift shelters like this one.
Yehya had a chance to leave Iraq in 2006 to go to the United States, but he turned it down.
He dreamed of building a new Iraq. That dream slowly fading.
SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Yehya, Displaced Iraqi:
“I hope to get another opportunity to leave Iraq. I have tried it and every 4-5 years there are problems, deep and serious problems, not just something small. Conflicts happen in other countries but they get resolved, quickly, because people manage to reach a solution. Here we seem unable to agree.”
As Yehya and his family prepare to move from this shelter to another, his dreams of a safe Iraq are suspended and maybe even gone forever.
Unless a much-needed political solution is found.
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