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The Fifth Floor

Factual: Life Stories

Global stories from the BBC’s 40 Language Services, with Faranak Amidi

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services.

Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services

The Fifth Floor: Syrian Kurds in Iraq

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11/10/2013

Syrian Kurds in Iraq

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, Syrian Kurds in Iraq

How Syrians are making new lives in Domiz, Iraq's largest refugee camp

How Syrians are making new lives in Domiz, Iraq's largest refugee camp.

This week The Fifth Floor is guest-presented by Lina Sinjab, a Syrian journalist who for many years has been reporting for the BBC from Damascus. 

Lina travels to Iraqi Kurdistan's largest refugee camp, Domiz - just an hour from the Syrian border - to meet some of the 60,000 refugees who are trying to build new lives. 

How do people live, love and die here away from home? Lina meets people at important moments in their lives: a mother with a newborn child, a couple preparing to marry, the doctor running the MSF clinic, and the man who deals with the dead and the bereaved. There's also Lukman, an army defector who had to fake his own death in order to leave Syria.

The majority of those crossing the border are Kurds, and their arrival in Iraqi Kurdistan has been championed by some as something of a homecoming -  but for most of the people we meet, living in a tent with the barest of essentials, they still feel very far from home.

Image: A view of Domiz, the largest refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan

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