By Taylor Luck
AMMAN – Iraqi refugees are at risk of being overlooked as victims of a forgotten conflict, a UN official in Amman warned on Wednesday.
As the international community marks World Refugee Day – observed annually June 20 – donor countries and the greater global community risk suffering from “Iraq fatigue”, according to Imran Riza, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Representative in Amman.
Regionally, emerging humanitarian crises in Syria and Libya have shifted the focus away from the plight of Iraqi refugees, who along with Afghans account for over half the world’s displaced persons.
“A lot of people want to see this as over, but it’s not. We are not seeing large numbers of people going back to Iraq,” Riza told The Jordan Times in a phone interview.
According to the UN official, a continued drop in funding for the agency, which is reliant on voluntary donations, has forced the UNHCR to rely on local partners and NGOs in Jordan to address a humanitarian crisis that eight years on, is far from over.