Displacement as challenge and opportunity. Urban profile: Refugees, internally displaced persons and host community. Duhok Governorate, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

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.