IRAQ: Parliament committee demands fixed budget to aid the displaced

BAGHDAD, 10 February 2008 (IRIN)

excerpt:

- With no end in sight for the plight of Iraqis displaced in and outside their country, a comprehensive, long-term government policy and budget to assist them is urgently required, an Iraqi parliamentary committee said on 9 February.

“We believe that occasional financial support given by the government, national and international organisations is not enough to solve this problem,” said MP Abdul-Khaliq Zankana, head of parliament’s Displacement and Migration Committee. “So the government has to adopt a fixed, clear and comprehensive policy that leads to an assigned budget as this problem [displacement] is unlikely to be solved in months or even years,” Zankana told IRIN.

Zankana proposed that the government should take advantage of an increase in national oil output and soaring world oil prices by allocating a percentage of oil revenues for a budget for aiding the displaced. “We propose 3 to 5 percent of national oil revenues should be allocated to this problem as they [displaced families] have become not only a burden on the Iraqi government but on all host countries as well,” he said.


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