By Shenah Abdullah: These days, one’s identity is of great significance and, wherever you go, people’s ethnic and religious backgrounds are emphasized. “We are Arab-Shabak and Shi’a from Telkif,” “We are Kurdish-Shabak and Shi’a from Bartilla,” “We are Yezidis from Shexan,” “They are Yezidis from Shangal” , etc. Each group and each family tries to…
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Category Archives: Refugees
Yazidi (in Kurdish Ezadi) Relief Fund
Press Release by Kurdish American Yazidi Relief Fund: Although Kurdish and international humanitarian organizations are ceaselessly continuing to provide food, clean water, sanitation and shelter for the tens of thousands of Yazidi (in Kurdish Ezadi; followers of one of the most ancient pre-Islamic religions in the world) refugees, the enormity of the calamity is too overwhelming…
Tragedy of Yazidis: Challenges and Directions of International Relief Aid in Kurdistan
By Dr Amir Sharifi: We still remember the ubiquitously ghastly images of tens of thousands of tired, traumatized, sunburned, bedraggled, de-hydrated, and beaten Yazidi refugees. The images are too haunting to forget: a mother still clinging to her dead child, tears streaming down the cheeks of a young daughter, a woman telling the shocking tale…
PKK Refugees Arrested at Turkish Border while Roboski Kurds Welcome Refugees
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: On August 11, 2014, Today’s Zaman reported that 6 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members “escaped” from the PKK and entered into Turkey at the Harbur border gate, south of Silopi, where they “turned themselves in”. According to an unnamed security officer interviewed on August 15, the six men are being…
Kurdish PKK Forces Gather to Retake Mahmur Camp and Shingal
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: Fighting continued today at UNHCR Mahmur Camp in northern Iraq. ‘Islamic State’ or IS (also referred to as ISID, ISIS or ISIL) controls it from inside. Twenty IS are reported to have been killed. All residents have left the town. The men of Mahmur Camp remain in the mountains approximately…
Humanitarian Crisis Looming for Turkey’s Kurds in Mahmur Camp, Iraq
By Amy L. Beam, Ed.D: ‘Islamic State’ Invades Another Kurdish Town On August 7, 2014, at 6 PM, the town of Mahmur Camp, established 20 years ago by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for Kurds fleeing Turkey, was invaded by the organisation now calling itself ‘Islamic State’, known as ISID in Turkey (or…
Appeal for US and international support for Kurdish Yazidi refugees
By Dr. Amir Sharifi: Open Letter to US President, UN General Secretary, Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Directors of NNICFF and UNHCR,WFP, WHO Sign the Petition The Kurdish American Education Society and Human Rights Advocacy Group join the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, and the National Council of Churches to appeal to the US government…
Humanity should wake up to the cries of Vian Daxi
By Mufid Abdulla: As a result of the ISIS occupation of Shengal last Friday, the women, children and old people of this town fled to the nearby mountains and some have already died of hunger and dehydration, among them at least 8 pregnant women and 12 children. Vian Daxil, a Yazidi Kurd MP in the…
Child education at a Syrian refugee camp
By Halsho Abdulfatah: Amoda Primary School is 20 kilometres from Slemani and accommodates 355 Syrian refugee children aged six to fourteen at the Arbot refugee camp. This is a fraction of the total number of children at the camp who need education. The school is managed by the Education Department of Slemani Directorate (EDSD) which has appointed…
‘From hell to jail’: Rojava refugees
By Kamal Chomani: Twitter: @KamalChomani A bitterly cold winter menaces some 235,000 Rojava Kurds (Syrian refugees) who sought safety and security in the Kurdistan Region (KR) as violence tore Syria apart. Over 12,000 of them, living in the Kawrgosk Refugee Camp, next door to the Kalak oil refinery, are gradually acclimatising to life under tents…
Kawrgosk refugee camp – a photo-story
KT Photo-Story: The Kawrgosk Refugee Camp was built on 15 Aug 2013, near an oil refinery in Khabat outside of Hawler. Its 419,000-square-metre capacity was initially intended for 10,000 people but today it shelters just over 12,000 refugees, mostly from Qamishly in Western Kurdistan (North Syria). The residents have been provided with all their basic household equipment…
