“The houses will be built using the Shingal and Nineveh Plains Reconstruction Fund and will be given free of charge to the IDPs who are returning to their homeland,” Ali Jihangir, a senior official of Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement, told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir on Wednesday.
Jihangir said that the ministry has reached an agreement with the Nineveh governor’s office to carry out the project, but noted that the number of units and the deadline for completing the project have yet to be determined.
Migration and Displacement Minister Evan Faeq Jabro on Wednesday announced that they have obtained the approval of Nineveh Govenor Abdulqadir al-Dakhil to allocate 50 dunams in Shingal and an additional 50 dunams in Mosul for the construction of residential units to encourage IDPs to return.
The 2023 Iraqi federal budget law established the Shingal and Nineveh Plains Reconstruction Fund which seeks to provide the required budget for the rehabilitation the war-torn province, with an estimated capital of 50 billion dinars (approximately 3.3 million dollars).
Around 22,000 IDP families originally from Shingal have yet to return home, according to Jihangir.
Yazidis in Shingal were subjected to countless heinous atrocities, including forced marriages, sexual violence, and massacres when the Islamic State (ISIS) captured the city in 2014, bringing destruction to many villages and towns populated by the minority group and committing genocide.
Naif Saido, mayor of Shingal, told Rudaw in August that 60 percent of Shingal residents still live in IDP camps and houses in the Kurdistan Region, mainly in Duhok province. He attributed this to political and financial factors as well as the Iraqi government’s failure to rebuild the houses that were destroyed during the war with ISIS.