Duhok, 2019 – Dawdiya Camp which hosts mostly Ezidis from Shingal – photo: KirkukNow.
There are still 698,902 IDPs (internally displaced persons) of different ethnic and religious backgrounds living in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), a small part of whom reside in camps.
According to the latest statistics from the Joint Crisis Centre of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Ministry of the Interior, about 957,000 Iraqi IDPs and refugees from Syria, Turkey, Iran and Palestine live in the Kurdistan Region.
The majority of them, about 698,900 (122,000 families) are IDPs.
Duhok province hosts the largest number of IDPs and refugees; 304,000. Erbil hosts the second largest number, 246,000, followed by Sulaimani with about 148,000.
The IDPs in the Kurdistan Region consist of 40% Sunni Arabs; 30% Ezidis; 13% Kurds; 7% Christians; and 10% Turkmens, Shabak, Armenians, Shi’a and others.
About 54% of the IDPs in the KRI are from the Nineveh province, 14% from Salahuddin, 13% from Anbar, 8% from parts of Erbil, 5% from Diyala, 3% from Baghdad and 3% from Kirkuk.
26% of the Palestine IDPs (about 182,000) reside in the camps. The majority (about 516,000) reside in the cities and towns.
There are 25 IDP and refugee camps in the KRI, 15 in Duhok province, six in Erbil and four in Sulaimani.
220 local and international humanitarian organizations, the UN among them, work in the camps.
According to the Joint Crisis Centre, the KRG needs about $74.6 million per month to provide services and shelter for the IDPs and refugees.
The Federal Government closed most of the IDP camps in quick succession, but it didn’t include those in the Kurdistan Region.
According to official numbers, about 32% of the IDPs in Iraq have returned to their home regions in 2020. But more than 3,000 new IDPs have taken refuge in the Kurdistan Region within the same year.
