Impact of strategic management on confronting refugee crisis in the Kurdistan region of Iraq

Abstract

In recent years, the Syrian refugee crisis has become one of the most vulnerable humanitarian crises in the region and internationally. Iraq is one of those countries that affected by this humanitarian crisis, especially the Kurdistan region because mostly those Syrian refugees arrived in Iraq, they had been sheltered in the Kurdistan region. The aim of this research is to examine the Kurdistan regional government's response to this humanitarian crisis in recent years, besides, finding out the main impacts of this crisis on the region in terms of economic and cultural, and pointing out the lessons that had been learned by KRG from this crisis. The research followed qualitative methodology by asking open-ended questions to those officials that worked in this field to respond to the questioner or interview questions. The scope of the study is four refugee camps in the Erbil Provence. The main results found is, KRG has successfully planned its response strategy to shelter Syrian refugees in strong coordination, collaboration, communication, and leadership with counterparts from UN agencies and international & local NGOs throughout open-door policy for Syrian refugees, and this refugee crisis has affected the KRG in a negative way in terms of the economy especially in the labor market.