Canada will accept a third of some 150 Palestinian refugees stranded in a camp in 'no man's land' on the Iraq-Jordan border for three years, a UN Refugee Agency spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
Most of the asylum seekers had moved to Iraq after the creation of Israel in 1948, then fled their new home after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, but were denied entry into Syria and Jordan.
They have been "stuck in no man's land," living in tents in a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) camp just inside the Jordanian border ever since, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid Van Genderen Stort told AFP. Canada agreed to take in 63 of them, she said.
"They're undergoing security and medical clearance. If they don't meet the requirements, some might still be turned away," she said. "At least 30 have already been cleared."
The UNHCR stepped up efforts to relocate them this year, noting their living situation in an isolated desert with extreme temperatures, and an abundance of dangerous snakes and scorpions, has been "difficult," Van Genderen Stort said.
"Their plight was presented to various countries," she said.
Almost 300 Iranian Kurds, who fled to Iraq during Iran's 1979 revolution, were relocated from the camp to Sweden and Ireland, and some Palestinians have been moved to New Zealand, she said.
The Palestinians had received preferential treatment in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. After he was ousted from power by US forces, they faced "a backlash" from upset Iraqis who had been poorly treated by the former president.
Jordan and Syria turned them away, claiming they had already welcomed their quota of Iraqi refugees from the previous Gulf War and Israel was not warm to the idea of them returning to the occupied territories, she said.
"It's been a really sad situation because it's gone on for so long. We're extremely glad that countries have accepted some of these people," Van Genderen Stort said. "But, it will be difficult for those who stay behind."