This morning, the Iraqi Armed Forces surrounded the Maxmur Refugee Camp in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) with tens of armoured vehicles, special forces and police personnel in an attempt to fence the camp in with barbed wire and turn it into a huge prison.

Over two decades after being forced from their homes in 1994 in North Kurdistan (Turkey), the people of the Maxmur Camp are forced to endure new threats and challenges. Officially, Maxmur is under the protection of the UNHCR, but in practice the UN is only nominally present. The organisation left the camp during the attacks by ISIS in 2014 and did not return afterwards.

The Executive Council of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) issued an urgent call to UNHCR to stop the Iraqi army’s aggression against the Kurdish refugees in Maxmur.

KNK pointed out that: “Since its establishment, this civilian refugee camp has been a perpetual target of the Turkish state. Turkish warplanes and drones (including armed drones) often fly above the camp, terrorising the refugees of Maxmur and leaving them to wonder when the next attack will come. The stated goal of the Turkish state, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his AKP-MHP regime, has always been the destruction of the camp and the elimination or dispersal of its residents. The full might of Turkey’s modern military is used against this refugee camp, and it has also been regularly attacked by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Iraq, which cooperates closely with the Turkish regime.”

The statement continued: “What the Turkish state could not achieve, the Iraqi government is now aiming to accomplish. The Maxmur Camp, home to approximately 11,000 people including thousands of children born into statelessness, is officially under the authority of UNHCR. Unfortunately, however, the agency’s silence and inaction following threats and attacks against the camp show it to be more aligned with the ruling parties of the region than with its stated mission of saving the lives and protecting the rights of refugees.”

“UNHCR has the responsibility and the diplomatic and political means to stop Iraq, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the agency to enhance the protection of refugees in 2016, from violating the rights of the Maxmur refugees and must intervene immediately to save the lives of people whose homes in exile have now been surrounded by the Iraqi Armed Forces. This unwarranted, aggressive action by Iraq against a large civilian population coupled with the Iraqi security forces’ dismal human rights record is cause for serious concern, and immediate intervention is imperative,” said the statement, adding: “In order to prevent any escalation that could endanger the lives of thousands of refugees, UNHCR must immediately intervene to protect the people of the Maxmur Camp.”