UNHCR staff action in the Middle East Emergency in Erbil
UNHCR staff action in the Middle East Emergency in Erbil
Drone attacks and missiles– the violence of war continues to devastate and destabilize the lives of people in the Middle East. In Erbil, Iraq, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has scaled up its response to protect people affected by the conflict.
Finnish UNHCR staff member Maiju Leino has just days to prepare before heading from Sweden to Erbil, Iraq. Her mission: to understand how escalating instability, attacks and economic hardship are affecting thousands of refugees already living there.
Maiju has several years of international field experience from Zambia and Uganda. She was deployed to Erbil as part of UNHCR’s emergency roster. In Iraq, Maiju stepped in to support and lead an exercise reaching nearly 2,900 refugee and asylum-seeker households across the country.
“Over the past few months, I stepped in to support and lead an effort that gathered information from nearly 2,900 refugee and asylum-seeker households across the country, to listen directly to refugees and understand how these changes were affecting their daily lives and future prospects. The regional tensions and recurring drone attacks have created uncertainty for both the forcibly displaced and the humanitarian actors supporting them.”
Prior to 28 February 2026, there were already more than 31 million forcibly displaced people in the wider Middle East region. Since then, the hostilities in Iran and Lebanon reverberated throughout the region, creating more and more uncertainty amongst people, as pre-existing social and economic fragilities were exacerbated by people being forced to flee, return, and live with uncertainty about the future.
The emergency came at a critical time for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, facing its worst financial crisis since its inception. However, with unearmarked funding, including from donors like Finland, the agency has been able to continue responding to humanitarian needs in the region and deploy essential staff to maintain and strengthen the protection of people forced to flee.
“When the regional hostilities in the Middle East started, UNHCR was concerned about potential influx of refugees and asylum-seekers from Iran to neighboring countries. Contingency plans were put in place to be able to respond if needed, but what quickly became clear was the impact it would have on existing refugee populations in the region. That’s where my deployment came in.”
The scale of the exercise was a definite challenge, especially with ongoing attacks making the data gathering process more challenging. So why did UNHCR Iraq carry out this exercise?
“While most refugee families continue to report feeling safe in Iraq, many are facing increasing economic hardship, reduced livelihood opportunities, rising living costs, documentation challenges, difficulties accessing critical services and concerns about what lies ahead. Many families have also been affected by reductions in humanitarian assistance and services caused by a lack of funding in recent years. Having concrete data that shows this, will help UNHCR develop evidence-based programming moving forward.”
This form of data is essential to UNHCR’s ability to take relevant and life-saving action based on long-term priorities and needs of refugees in the region. For Maiju, however, the exercise was about more than collecting data. It was also about listening to people who have lived with displacement and uncertainty for years.
“Meeting with refugees in Iraq, many who have called the country home for over a decade, what struck me most was the determination with which refugees continue to navigate these challenges” she says. "Many households continue to rely on their own resourcefulness and community networks to support their families. However, the exercise also highlighted that many individuals remain at risk and continue to need protection and access to essential services.”
For Maiju, that raises a pressing question: will the resources be there to respond to what refugees are telling UNHCR?
"For me, one of the biggest takeaways from this experience is that evidence matters, but evidence alone is not enough. We now have a clearer picture of the needs, risks, and gaps facing refugee communities across Iraq. My concern is will UNHCR have the resources needed to address those gaps. As needs continue to grow and resources become more limited, the challenge is no longer just understanding where support is needed most. It is ensuring that we can still respond. Keeping refugees' voices at the centre of that conversation has never been more important.”
