Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Avebury (Liberal Democrat). It was answered on Monday, 21 January 2008.

Iraq: Refugees

Question: My Lords, in view of the fact that we are jointly responsible, with the United States, for the disastrous situation in which these 4.2 million people are displaced from their homes, does not the noble Baroness agree that we should cough up a larger proportion of the UNHCR’s appeal for 2008 than the measly 4 per cent we gave in 2007? Bearing in mind that only one in five of the 21,000 people whom the UNHCR put up for resettlement in 2007 were accommodated, and that another 20,000 are coming down the track this year, will the Government get together with our partners and make sure that the offers that we jointly make with them match the size of the need?

Answer: My Lords, I understand that the funds targeted appear disproportionately small, given the scale of the refugee situation, but I do not think that that takes into proper account the factors in Iraq. It is very difficult to identify Iraqi displaced people within the neighbouring countries and within Iraq because they get absorbed into the host community and are very hard to identify. Only 3 per cent of refugees and IDPs live in camps. As a result, we cannot provide assistance in the targeted way that the noble Lord is suggesting. The best way to provide assistance is to the whole community into which the IDPs and the refugees have been absorbed. We therefore think that the issue is about the reconstruction of the system in Iraq for basic services. Funding is therefore not a problem— there has been more than $30 billion of oil revenue in the past year, and less than a quarter of its capital budget was used. The issue is capacity. Of the £680 million that we have disbursed in reconstruction, our efforts go towards creating the capacity of the Iraq Government to provide services.

Secondary information