Reuters AlertNet: Grim camps for Iraqis avoid the ‘pull factor’
Refugee workers call it the “pull factor” — camps with conditions comfortable enough to attract people in a country where an average of 60,000 Iraqis a month are driven from their homes by sectarian violence.
So the challenge for aid workers is to provide safe havens that do not invite permanence. The Qawala camp on the outskirts of Sulaimaniya in northern Kurdistan, a haven of stability in a treacherous country, fits the bill.
Conditions are unlikely to pull in all but the most desperate.
Posted on August 3rd, 2007 at 12:02am under Chicken Nuggets, Iraq
Given the state of most of the rest of the country, these camps will have to approach Belsen levels of grimness if they want to discourage the desperate from fleeing to them.