In the days after militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), seized control of Iraq’s second city Mosul in early June, some 500,000 Iraqis of varying ethnicities streamed into the northern Kurdistan region seeking shelter in a mix of hotels, mosques, schools and parks.
However, in recent weeks, aid workers say that access has been tightened and fewer displaced people are being allowed in.
According to NGO staff working at the border, checkpoints are regularly closed and thousands of people are kept waiting for long periods - in some instances up to five days - without information and with limited access to shelter, food and water.
There is also, rights groups say, a trend of different access rules being applied based on people’s ethnicity and religion: Kurds and Christians, or those who have sponsors inside Kurdistan, are able to pass relatively easily, but generally Sunni and Shia Arabs and Turkomen are being stopped or sent to temporary holding sites.
A senior aid worker from an international NGO, who declined to be named due to the “extreme sensitivities” of the issue, said: “The blocking of entry to people along ethnic lines is an issue and it needs to be looked at.”
