Iraq: From a Flood to a Trickle

Human Rights Watch has a new briefing paper on the recent restrictions by neighbouring countries on the entry of Iraqi refugees. Read the full report here.

Amnesty International also has a media briefing document on the Iraqi refugee crisis here including the report by a recent fact-finding mission to Jordan. I have posted before that an increasing number of Iraqis seeking to enter Jordan, both by land and air, are being turned back. Until early this year it was just young males between the ages of 17 and 35, but recently even women, children and the elderly, as well as people with proper documentation seeking medical treatment or travel to third countries, are being barred from entering Jordan. Amnesty's report mentions some of these cases, including one in which six Shi'ite Iraqis from Samawa were turned back at Traibeel on the Jordanian border. When they took the land route back through Ramadi, they were stopped by insurgents and beheaded, except one passenger who managed to convince them that he was a Sunni from Adhamiya in Baghdad.

And here is a research paper by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy which looks at how Jordan is dealing with the influx of Iraqi refugees and the recent restrictions placed on their entry.