Kurdistan Autonomous Region

The Kurdistan Autonomous Region (Kurdish: Herêma Xweser a Kurdistanê; Arabic: منطقة كُردستان الذاتية minṭaqat kurdistān adh-dhātīyah), informally East Kurdistan (Rojhilata Kurdistanê; كُردستان الشرق kurdistān ash-sharq), is the only autonomous region of the Arab Union and one of two jurisdictions outside the 20 republics of the Arab Union, alongside the federal capital of Nasser City. Located in the northeast of the country, the Kurdistan Autonomous Region borders the republics of Iraq to the south and Syria to the west, as well as the sovereign states of Turkey to the north and Iran to the east. Its capital is Kirkuk and largest city is Erbil. It is home to a population of approximately 7.48 million, about 75% of whom are ethnic Kurds, 10% Arabs, 10% people of mixed (mostly Kurdish-Arab) heritage, and the remaining 5% split between immigrant communities (especially Pakistanis) and other much smaller communities indigenous to the region (such as Assyrians and Yazidis).

Unlike the 20 republics of the Arab Union, which share sovereignty with the union as federated states, the Kurdistan Autonomous Region is governed by a devolved authority. While this means the Kurdistan Autonomous Council can theoretically be dissolved unilaterally by the Arab Congress, in practice the region has the same level of autonomy from the union as the republics, with the Kurdistan Autonomous Government functioning in much the same manner as a governorate and its ministries and agencies responsible for the same scope of public administration–examples include the Kurdistan Regional Police, Kurdistan Correctional Administration and Kurdistan Fire and Rescue Service under the Ministry of Interior. One additional area of jurisdiction is public education–in the rest of the Arab Union, public education is overseen by the federal Ministry of Education; as the autonomous region's own public education system primarily uses the Kurdish language rather than Arabic, it is instead separately administered by the Kurdistan Public Education Authority.