Tom Murphy
RedwoodAge.com

International agencies are scrambling to find aid to help millions of Iraqi refugees – many of them children - who’ve fled their homes in the war-torn country since the US invasion of 2003.

The US has accepted only 133 refugees and recently pledged to take another 7,000. Critics said the US must to more, particularly in providing aid to Jordon and Syria where most of the refuges have fled.

Amnesty International and the United Nations are calling for urgent international help. Iraqis now represent the third-largest group of refugees in the world behind Palestinians and Somalians trying to escape the brutality of Darfur. 

Amnesty International says the crisis is "dire and worsening by the day" for more than 2 million Iraqis who have fled violence and almost 2 million others who are internally displaced. 

The refugees in Jordan and Syria are “threatening a humanitarian crisis that could engulf the region unless concerted international action is taken now," said Malcolm Smart, head of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program.

The group says Jordan has an estimated 750,000 Iraqis while another 1.5 million went to Syria. Egypt and Lebanon have more than 200,000 Iraqi refugees each.

"Many refugees said they received no food and that their savings had dried up,” the group said in a statement, adding some refugees said they’d been tortured and raped.

The U.N. refugee agency estimates 50,000 people flee Iraq every month, mostly to neighboring Jordan and Syria.

Unkept Promise
Amnesty's statement criticized the Iraqi government, saying that $25 million pledged by Baghdad has not materialized. It also blasted the US, EU, Britain and other states for their lack of help.

"This is a crisis that was made in Iraq, not in Syria or Jordan, and the Iraqi authorities have a duty now to help its neighbors meet the needs of Iraqis who have been displaced," the group said. Syrian and Jordan "should not be left to bear the weight of this crisis alone."

Jordan and Syria say they’ve been ignored by western countries.

Milad Atiya, the Syrian ambassador to Jordan, said other countries "must be involved, especially the United States because its policy led to the plight the Iraqis are currently in and it bears responsibility."

"The U.S. offer to take in 7,000 refugees is symbolic," said Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Haji Hmoud. "This is not a solution. Seven thousand is nothing."

Children Left Behind
The UN is seeking $129 million to educate tens of thousands of Iraqi children who fled to Syria and Jordan to escape Iraq's violence.

"Many have no access to school," said Judy Cheng-Hopkins, the U.N. refugee agency's head of operations. "The facilities are fully over-stretched."

Cheng-Hopkins said donor countries and organizations must come forward with funds. "Otherwise we would be left with a whole generation of uneducated and possibly alienated youth," she said.

RedwoodAge news services contributed to this report.