1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
WHY A PROFILING STUDY?
A crisis context
The Duhok Governorate, with a total host population of 1.47 million people as well as 718,000 displaced people (IDPs and refugees aggregated), lies at the western side of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, bordering with Turkey and Syria. It is the main entry door by road of both people and goods from these two countries. It also borders the Mosul Lake, which separates the Nineveh Governorate from Duhok. This geographic position has placed the Duhok Governorate as the principal shelter for Syrian refugees fleeing the conflict in the northern areas of Syria in 2012, as well as for families displaced after the fall of Mosul,
Nineveh, in June 2014.
In August 2014, after the fall of Sinjar, Duhok received large numbers of Yezidi IDPs, often fleeing and transiting through the Sinjar Mountains and Syria, before settling in the Duhok Governorate.
While the host community and the local authorities have endured the impact of displacement in the first years, the deterioration of security in the rest of Iraq and the pervasive financial crisis affecting the public and private sectors of the economy are placing the governorate under enormous strain. Budget disputes between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iraq’s Federal Government led to the KRG receiving irregular and intermittent funds from Baghdad for the last 3 years. In addition, due to a lack of an adequate taxation system in the Kurdistan Region to fund the public budget, the Kurdistan Regional Government has been almost completely dependent on its own oil exports to cover costs. These revenues, however, have diminished drastically after international oil prices dropped by around 70%, starting mid-2014, which has limited and paralysed any further development of public service provision, mainly education and health care.
Taken together, conflict, displacement, and a weak economy are negatively impacting government functions, household resilience, private sector survival, and public service provision in the Duhok Governorate and in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in general.
Solutions to redress the situation must stem from a holistic analysis. This profiling exercise takes place within a complex environment, affected by many layers of external and internal shocks. It is therefore crucial to complement the significant amount of information available on the families sheltered in camps for refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) with a new and comparable analysis of those residing out of camps, in urban areas. It is also relevant to include a review of the needs of the host community living alongside these populations, so that the strategies to mitigate the effects of displacement can benefit all.
For these reasons, the profiling exercise has been conducted; it aims to address the need for an indepth analysis of the urban displacement situation as it relates to both displaced and host populations in the Duhok Governorate.
Why an urban approach?
As mentioned by the Minister of Planning, Ali Sindi, in his foreword to this report, the shift of focus from an emergency response to a longer-term one has to include urban areas in its core. Even though the governorate has a relatively high percentage of refugees and IDPs in camps compared to the rest of Kurdistan’s governorates, the majority of refugees and IDPs live in urban areas, as explained in the following section.
The case of the Duhok Governorate, with 33% of the total population now being IDPs or refugees, is especially relevant given the fact that the displacement did not primarily stem from within its boundaries, like in the case of the Anbar Governorate, but originates from different governorates. Therefore, an additional number of households compete for the available resources in urban areas across the governorate and require public services in addition to the local population.
Urban areas, ultimately, offer newly displaced populations a very dynamic environment in which to develop their own livelihood strategies.
Frequently, these households prefer to establish themselves in urban areas in spite of the challenges in terms of living costs, employment, and social cohesion.
Duhok’s Board of Relief and Humanitarian Affairs (BRHA), for instance, reported on the difficulties in encouraging people to move into camps, including families living in unfinished buildings, who are not willing to abandon the opportunities that urban areas offer.
Objectives of the profiling
The overarching aim of the assessment is therefore to establish an evidence base for policy and practice recommendations for the governorate authorities and humanitarian and development actors in developing comprehensive, long-term responses to out-of-camp displacement concerns.
The specific profiling objectives are:
• To provide demographic profiles disaggregated by sex, age, displacement status (i.e., refugees,
IDPs, and host community), and diversity in the targeted areas;
• To provide profiles of the different urban areas with a high concentration of out-of-camp displaced populations;
• To analyse the capacities, vulnerabilities, and coping mechanisms of the populations residing in the targeted areas;
• To analyse the resilience of urban areas in relation to the availability and limitations of services and livelihoods;
• To provide a dataset available to the KRG and the humanitarian / development community.
Preliminary findings were shared and validated with Governorate stakeholders, UN agencies, and NGOs in a workshop held in the Governor’s office in July 2016. The recommendations for the report were subsequently jointly discussed by all parties. This report is, in effect, a joint effort between all the stakeholders playing a significant role in the humanitarian response to the displacement crisis in the Duhok Governorate.