Nearly 100,000 Iraqis are fleeing the country each month to Syria and Jordan, forcing the United Nations to abandon its plan to help refugees to return home, officials said Friday. Instead, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has drafted plan to deal with increasing numbers of Iraqis fleeing continual sectarian violence, according to chief spokesman Ron Redmond, speaking in Geneva. Much of our work in the three years since the fall of the previous regime was based on the assumption that the domestic situation would stabilize and hundreds of thousands of previously displaced Iraqis would be able to go home, Redmond said. "Now, however, we re seeing more and more displacement linked to the continuing violence." Redmond said it has been impossible to accurately record the number of refugees fleeing the country because few Iraqis are registering with UNHCR, and most are being cared for by host families or charitable organizations, he said. The U.N. agency has been counting those entering Syria in recent months, however, and has found an average of 2,000 a day leaving Iraq by that route. The Jordanian government says another 1,000 a day are entering Jordan, he said. Redmond said almost all the refugees are believed to be staying in Syria and Jordan, but a few are returning to Iraq and others are going to other countries. He noted that Iraqis were the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe in the first half of this year, with 8,100 applying a 50 percent increase from a year ago. Figures were unavailable for arrivals in other neighboring countries, but the agency says an additional 50,000 Iraqis a month are fleeing their homes but remaining within Iraq, giving them the classification internally displaced. "We' ve got a displacement crisis under way here, and the international community needs to do more to chip in to support the humanitarian needs of these people," Redmond said. UNHCR estimates that 425,000 Iraqis have been displaced this year alone, largely due to sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. UNHCR now estimates that 1.8 million Iraqis are living in neighboring countries and 1.6 million are displaced internally, but those numbers include many who fled during the 1990s, long before the invasion, Redmond said. As of July, Iraq's population was estimated at 26.7 million.
