Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to address the members of the standing committee. This is an honour for me and the organization I represent today.
I will continue in English, which is my working language. That will make my presentation easier.
My name is Emmanuel Gignac. I'm the head of UNHCR in the Kurdistan region. I've been now in Iraq for a bit more than a year, based in Erbil, covering the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
I will be fairly brief. I will give you an overview of what has now become a unique situation, with the Syrian refugees on the one hand and the newly erupted IDP crisis on the other. I will move on after that to talk briefly about the challenges ahead and then finish with the funding situation.
First, on the refugee situation, the Syrian refugees have been flowing into the Kurdistan region of Iraq already since 2012, with an influx in 2013. Over 50,000 refugees arrived in two days. The figures show that at the beginning of 2014 there were 190,000. They have now reached 220,000 to 230,000, since we started getting a new influx of refugees who came from the town of Kobani into Turkey and from Turkey into the Kurdistan region. This has been happening since October so you can...[Inaudible--Editor]...the IDP crisis, which started a bit earlier in 2014.
A majority of the people are living outside camps. About 60% of the refugee population are sharing services and living inside the host community. The vast majority of the refugees are in the Kurdistan region. There are nine camps. One, however, is in the Anbar province and that is now an area being controlled by ISIS. We are still able to provide assistance there, but in a very ad hoc way and not very reliably.
The other camps are in the Kurdistan region, three in Dohuk, four in Erbil, and one in Sulaymaniyah. The UNHCR, as you know, has the lead on the coordination of the refugee response. This has been organized through the refugee response plan, which this year has seen.... We've added a component of resilience, which led to the development of the 3RP, the refugee response and resilience plan, which was launched initially in Berlin last December.
As to the achievement on the refugee front, certainly since 2013 eight camps were built. They were further improved in 2014 and we now have a living standard that is quite impressive in these camps: infrastructure, sanitation infrastructure, water supply infrastructure, but the shelter as well. This has improved considerably the situation of the refugees.
We registered all refugees in 2014. We also rolled out biometric registration in the context of a verification that is still under way and will be completed by the beginning of this year. Part of the achievement is also the services to children, psychosocial services in child-friendly spaces in partnership with UNICEF. There is also work that has begun with the community regarding sexual or gender-based violence, an important issue that is not very easy to address in the context of Kurdistan. In 2014, up to 54,000 community members were reached through the awareness campaigns that were carried out.
I talked already about the shelter. There are numerous other achievements, but I do not wish to enter into them in order to remain within my limits of time. I pass now to the IDP crisis, which erupted, as you know, in June here in the Kurdistan region. However, the first wave had started in Anbar. Basically, the IDP crisis has been composed of three waves. The first one was from January to June, which concerned mainly central Iraq. About half a million IDPs were displaced, people were displaced. The second wave followed the fall of Mosul and threw another 550,000 people into displacement. The third wave was the most important one. It occurred at the time of the offensive in Sinjar and the Nineveh plains, which added another 830,000 people. We're talking nowadays about, in Iraq, 2.2 million people being displaced. Almost half of that population is located in the Kurdistan region, a region whose population amounts to about five million. So you get a good idea of the pressure that it is putting on the public services in the northern Iraq area.
As far as the UNHCR is concerned, we've taken on the responsibility for three clusters in the complex of the IDP. This is always under the leadership of OCHA, who are in charge of the coordination of the IDP response. Clusters had been established in Baghdad in January 2013. They've been extended to January 2014, and activated here in northern Iraq.
In terms of achievement, it's been a bit of a roller coaster since June. One of the main issues was shelter of the people. We had a massive number of people who were, let's say, in the open, in unfinished buildings, and also in schools, which needed to be evacuated in order to have the school year started. We had to scramble to build a large number of camps. The UNHCR, with the funds that we have received, was able to complete eight camps. Two are still under construction. These camps will be hosting up to 90,000 people. We've been also supporting 537 collective centres across Iraq, benefiting 26,000 people.
One of the key issues, of course, back in August, was the approaching winter and the need to protect people and give them the necessary equipment to go through winter. Thanks to the funding that was generously given to UNHCR, 70,000 families were provided with winter kits, which was quite a challenge. But we were able to finalize our winterization in mid-January—it had started in October. In addition to core relief items, kits have been distributed to all new arrivals.
We have currently 25 camps that have been constructed throughout Iraq and there are 10 that are under way. Out of these 25, 17 are located in the Kurdistan region, and of the10 under way or under construction, five will be located in Kurdistan region. This gives you a good idea of the massive proportion of the displacement there is.
Inside this, we remain below the needs when it comes to shelter. The most recent assessment unveiled that we still have 450,000 people who are living in unsuitable shelters that are not adequate and are therefore in need of better shelter.
When we talk about challenges, there is the fact that the last wave of people was in August and we're almost six or seven months after that. We still suffer with this huge number of people displaced. It's still a big challenge how to reach these people and how to provide support to everyone. Among the refugees and the IDPs the majority are staying outside camps, in public buildings or unfinished buildings in the host community. They are using public services, the health services, education, sanitation, electricity, etc. There is a huge pressure on the public services in Kurdistan.
The other big challenge of course is the fact that the military operations are still ongoing and further displacement is likely to occur. We are thinking of course of Mosul in particular. Should there be a military operation that would take Mosul, we are fearful that this would lead to other waves of large numbers of displaced people.
Lack of access to conflict areas is also a challenge that we need to see how we can address...[Inaudible--Editor]...also the fiscal crisis that we see in the Kurdistan region, hampering their ability to support the crisis.
I want to highlight one of the potential impacts of the crisis, which has been very much on the news—