ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) continues to provide shelter for nearly one million internally displaced persons and refugees, a massive humanitarian effort that costs the region close to one billion US dollars each year, officials announced on Monday.

The staggering figures were revealed during the Migration Governance Conference in Erbil, co-organized by the KRG’s Joint Crisis Coordination Centre (JCCC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Srwa Rasul, Director General of the JCCC, provided a detailed breakdown, stating that 858,578 people remain under the region’s care. These individuals reside in a network of 27 formal camps and within host communities across the region.

The displaced population consists of 578,403 Iraqis forced from their homes in other parts of the country and 280,175 refugees from neighboring nations.

The vast majority of refugees, some 261,939, are from Syria, having fled the country's prolonged civil war. The remainder includes 8,791 from Iran, 7,240 from Turkey, and 1,005 from Palestine.

Rasul underscored the severe financial strain this effort places on the KRG’s resources. She noted that supporting the 198,000 displaced families costs approximately $803 million annually—a sum that breaks down to roughly $66 million per month or a staggering $2.6 million every day.

The Kurdistan Region emerged as a critical safe haven during two major waves of displacement. The first followed the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, which sent hundreds of thousands of refugees across the border. The second and larger crisis came in 2014 with the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), which terrorized Iraq and displaced more than two million people, particularly from Nineveh and central Iraq, who fled toward the relative safety of the north.