Operation R-4 Executive Summary

Beginning in May 2006, and continuing over an intensive 12-week period, the Chaldean Federation of America conducted a world-wide survey of Iraqi Christian refugees to:

• Support its testimony of appeal on June 28,2006 before the US Department of State Public Meeting on FY 07 Refugee Admission Program

• Identify significant concentrations, as well as small enclaves in countries of refuge in this, the Fourth Diaspora of Iraqi Christians in 100 years;

• Build a data-driven strategy to assist with humanitarian relief and/or facilitate Iraqi Christians refugees resettlement in the receiving country and/or in the US;

• Recommend approaches to humanely and equitably address the needs of refugees by seeking:

• Removal of the cap on refugee admissions to the US from the Middle East to allow entry for an additional 10,000 Iraqi Christians for the 2006 and the 2007 cycles;

• Intervention of appropriate agency(ies) or organization(s) of the United Nations, the US Department of State and humanitarian NGO’s to:

  • support adherence to the 1951 Refugee Convention guidelines for the treatment of refugees (e.g. the permanent waiver of overstay penalties charged to the Iraqi Christian refugees;

  • provide medical and social assistance

  • reaffirm the issuance of temporary work permits in current countries of refuge; and,

  • ensure the continued education of children and youth in the country of refuge.

• Extend the CFA’s linguistic and cultural resources with other partner organizations to further document needs and impediments to the productive, safe transition, repatriation and/or resettlement of Iraqi Christians to the US or within the more than 31 countries of the world to which they have fled.

The CFA’s initiative was guided by a systematic three-stage design that included: survey development and validation; outreach and dissemination; data collection, handling, entry, organization and analysis. Although originally intended to be a time-limited study, the community’s overwhelming response has moved the CFA’s Immigration and Refugee Committee to extend the intake process beyond the deadline and to organize data into “Waves” according to dates of receipt of the applications by the CFA.

The CFA’s Wave 1 Survey identified 1204 cases representing 3,927 Iraqi Christian refugees who have fled to 31 countries of the world across the regions of the Middle East, Central Asia, the Far East, Europe, Africa and South America. Although the 92% majority of refugees have aggregated in Greece, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey, there are growing numbers in northern Europe in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Sweden and as yet unrecorded Wave II movements to countries of transit in South America (Wave I identified a handful of refugees in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia). Approximately 29% (28.49%) of this first Wave of potential beneficiaries have “Protected Status” by virtue of UNHCR or other forms of certification.

Within the four transit countries of highest concentrations of Iraqi Christian refugees (Greece, Jordan, Syria and Turkey) 85 % of the potential beneficiaries reported religious persecution as uppermost among those factors contributing to exodus from their ancestral homeland. Nearly 70% of the sample reported multiple precipitating factors for their flight, including the experience of torture or violence themselves or among family members (directly attributable to their religious minority status), the loss of their homes and/or businesses to destruction, looting or confiscation by Islamist gangs, militia or insurgents (37%).. Although less than 7% of the respondents reported sexual assaults and/or rapes as among those factors precipitating flight, more than twice that figure, or nearly 17% of the sample, indicated the vulnerabilities of the women and girls of their families as factors in their flight from Iraq, with 25% having experienced the abduction of mainly female family members by marauding insurgents, Islamist gangs and/or militia. Only 2% of Wave I respondents expressed the potential for “local integration,” which may have been surmised based on the less than optimal conditions and/or receptivity in the countries of transit. Of additional note is the large number of cases (25.82% overall) that could be considered exceptional, or indicative of particular vulnerability due to the horrific nature and extent of their sufferings.

1 representing more than 250,000 Iraqi Christian-Americans across the United States in Michigan, Illinois, Nevada, Arizona, and California

2 Plight of the Iraqi-Christian Refugees presented by CFA Executive Director, Joseph T. Kassab