Life getting harder for Syrian refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan | Amnesty's global human rights blog

Life getting harder for Syrian refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan | Amnesty's global human rights blog:

 Sitting on a thin mattress inside a ramshackle structure on a muddy hilltop, elderly Abu Fares told me how he came to live in poverty in Iraq’s relatively prosperous northern Kurdistan region.

For the past 11 months, he and his wife – along with around 200 families – have been eking out a living in makeshift shelters on the outskirts of the overcrowded Domiz refugee camp near the city of Dohuk.

They are among tens of thousands who fled here amid the ongoing armed conflict in Syria – in their case leaving behind their home some 250km away in Qamishli, a city tucked into Syria’s north-eastern corner, near the border with Turkey.

Before sitting down to listen to Abu Fares, we left our mud-caked shoes outside the fragile home they had erected themselves. Once inside, sweet tea was brought and poured. His wife, Um Fares, looked glum amidst a cloud of her own cigarette smoke. Then her one good eye noticed the mud on my trousers. “Let me wash them for you”, she says, “You look like my son”.

Overcrowding at Domiz refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan has forced around 200 families of Syrian refugees to live in a ramshackle “irregular area” on its fringes. © Amnesty International