Duhok Province is located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, northeast of Mosul, on the border with Turkey and Syria and around 440 metres above sea level. Duhok District, along with the other five districts of Semel, Amedi, Akre, Bardarash and Shekhan, are the six districts of Duhok Province.
Due to its location and development, the city is of great economic and commercial value to the entire region of Iraq. The population of the Duhok Province is approximately 1.5 million and consists mainly of Kurds, with an array of minority groups such as Assyrians, Yazidis, Chaldeans, Arabs and Armenians mixed in. Compared to other regions of Iraqi Kurdistan, Duhok is quite diverse – both religiously and ethnically. 68% of the population of Duhok’s Province lies within the two districts of Duhok and Semel; the people of these two districts, including refugees and Displaced Iraqi People, are estimated at 732.554 inhabitants.
Duhok and Semel Districts faced huge artificial crises of influxes of IDPs and Refugees. Meanwhile, they regularly confront natural crises as in winter floods occur in the city, and in summer, the city and its outskirts are affected by large fires. These two districts administratively have never had a Crisis Management (CM) team or unit to deal with crises that give the options of being able to deal with it, which causes little organised response and no prevention.
Therefore, aiming at planning and strengthening basic service delivery at the governmental level, MASAR assisted the Directorate of Migration and Crisis Response in Duhok (DMCR) and Duhok Governorate in the development and creation of a permanent unit to deal with natural crises and develop a plan for crisis management in Duhok and Semel which is called Crisis Management (CM) Team. The project has never been conducted before in Duhok at the national level. The project beneficiaries are the 23 directorates involved, and the indirect beneficiaries are the citizens of Duhok Governorate.
Since the Crises Management team is operational communication and coordination have improved between Duhok directorates. Moreover, the team’s experience is replicated on the regional level with the JCC/ Ministry of Interior and Erbil DMCR Directorate. This provides the essential elements to be resilient to natural and manmade disasters. After all these workshops and training, the team’s mono-plans booklet and unified plan to confront disasters were presented and endorsed by DMCR, Duhok Governorate and JCC in Erbil and the Ministry of Interior of Kurdistan Region Government.