Introduction to Special Issue on Displacement in Iraq
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author | Rochelle Davis |
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12560 |
Introduction to Special Issue on Displacement
in Iraq
Rochelle Davis*
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF IRAQI DISPLACEMENT
This special issue of International Migration addresses Iraq as both a host country for refugees and
a country whose own citizens are displaced inside and outside its borders. The articles were first
presented as papers during a large conference (held in English, Arabic, and Kurdish) and hosted by
the American University in Kurdistan –Hewl^
er/Erbil (AUK) in April 2017 in cooperation with
AUK, the International Organization for Migration and Georgetown University. They were edited,
blind peer-reviewed and collected here in this special issue. The articles in this volume provide
windows into the strategies employed by forced migrants, the responses of local communities, the
governmental and international aid actors and the policies of the Iraqi, Kurdish and other govern-
ments. The articles here, all based on primary research conducted in Iraq, show how Iraqis and Syr-
ians continue to manage the risks they face as they remain in displacement or return home. This
short introduction will provide historical background on Iraq and its history of displacement and
discuss the contributions made by the articles in this issue.
Iraq has a population of 36 million people, of whom 11.1 million are classified as living in rural
areas (World Bank, 2016a). Iraq’s GDP puts it in the upper middle-income category, at $14,894 per
capita in 2015. The corresponding figure for 1990 was $7,442. The change parallels the global per
capita averages of $5,413 in 1990 and $15,470 in 2015, although Iraq’s GDP was higher, relative to
these averages, in 1990 than it is at present (World Bank, 2016b). According to the World Bank,
“many Iraqi governorates have witnessed significant declines in poverty of more than 10 percentage
points between 2007 and 2013: these include Salah el-Din, Karbala, Babylon, Diyala, Basrah, and
Al-Anbar. Wasit, Al-Najaf, Douhuk, Kirkuk and Baghdad, saw smaller declines in poverty, and
Sulaymaniyah and Erbil saw little change”(World Bank, 2016c, p.22). Life expectancy stands at just
over 69 years.
Iraqis have experienced multiple waves of displacement in modern history. In the 1940s and
1950s, rapid urbanization occurred in and around Baghdad and Basra, due to landless rural families
fleeing the repressive policies of landowners (Phillips, 1959). These new city residents created tem-
porary, impoverished encampments that have now transformed into thriving neighbourhoods. In the
1970s and 1980s, Saddam Hussein’s regime used displacement as a tool to consolidate political
control. Through Arabization policies and sectarian favouritism, his regime marginalized ethnic and
religious minorities and displaced over 1 million Kurds and Shi’a (Sassoon, 2009: 9; Chatelard,
2010; al-Takriti, 2010). The 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Hussein regime
did not immediately trigger massive waves of displacement. However, the instability and the poli-
cies developed by the occupation authorities led to sectarian violence as Iraqi political parties
* Georgetown University, Washington, DC
doi: 10.1111/imig.12560
©2019 The Authors
International Migration ©2019 IOM
International Migration Vol. 57 (2) 2019
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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