Repatriation of Iran-based Iraqi refugees

An Iraqi minister said Friday Baghdad attaches special importance to the repatriation of Iraqi refugees who had fled to Iran from atrocities of Saddam Hussein's regime and did not have Iraqi birth certificate.

Iraq's Minister of Displacement and Migration Abd al-Samad Sultan made the remarks in an interview with the Arab-language Al-Arabiya news channel.

"The Iraqi government will give a piece of land to refugees who return home (from Iran)," said the minister noting that hundreds of thousand of Iraqi citizens who have fled to Iran as a result of atrocities of the former Iraqi regime currently do not have Iraqi birth certificates.

Iraq is to open offices in Iran to follow up problems of Iran-based Iraqis, Sultan said.

He added that the government of Iraq had also decided to grant original Iraqi birth certificates to those refugees who were born in 1957 based on their birth certificates.

According to Iraqi regulations, those having original Iraqi birth certificates would have no problem in being hired in public and military sectors.

Under Saddam Hussein's rule, only those who had birth certificates from the Ottoman Empire era (1860-1906) could receive original Iraqi birth certificates. However, the rule is no longer in effect under the new Iraqi government.