Migration as Development? Scrutinizing Iraq’s Ambitious National Strategy
In 2025, Iraq launched its first National Plan to Encourage Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, a significant strategic turning point in how the country conceives of and responds to migration. The plan reverses the location of migration from one that is to be managed to an asset for stability, economic growth, and human dignity. Placed within the context of Iraq’s commitment to the Global Compact for Migration, the strategy is based on governance structures placing migrant well-being and national resilience at the very top of policy objectives.
Iraq occupies a unique position in global migration systems. It is both a country of origin, destination, and return simultaneously. More than two million Iraqis live outside the country, with significant return flows in recent years—over 58,000 since 2018. Iraq also receives almost 370,000 foreign migrant workers, who are mainly employed in domestic, agricultural, and construction work. The new policy strives to reconcile these facts into an integrated framework that can welcome returning Iraqis and incoming migrant workers, and hopefully counteract demographic pressures and economic revival.
Migration Minister Evan Faeq Gabro stated the plan is a “vision for Iraq’s future that upholds human dignity.” This alignment highlights Iraq’s broader attempt to align national policy with international norms and sustainable development goals.
Collaborative policy-making anchored in evidence
The development of the strategy has been led by Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement, supported by multilateral organizations like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Netherlands Government. It is based on extensive consultations with community members, civil society, and private sector actors.
Ugochi Daniels, IOM Deputy Director General for Operations, characterized Iraq’s strategy as “a regional model” for the nation’s success in bringing migration together with opportunity and institutional reform. This partnership-based approach gives top priority to analyzing data and the use of context-driven policy instruments to manage migration comprehensively.
From fragmented response to integrated governance
Among the central aims is to replace the fragmented, ad hoc responses of recent years with long-term institutional coordination. Iraq aims to strengthen administrative capacities and build transparent mechanisms for skills recognition, documentation of migrants, and enforcement of legal protections.
The private sector is also being motivated to participate in offering employment opportunities for returnees and migrants. Labour market integration, vocational training, and better regulation of working conditions are some of the major pillars in the strategy’s ambition to construct a sustainable economic ecosystem around migration.
Challenges on the path to transforming migration governance
Despite strong vision and coordination, implementation is full of obstacles. Reintegration of returnees is encumbered with widespread insecurity, unsatisfactory services, and a jammed labor market. The majority of the returnees lack vocational and education matching needed for work in the immediate future, particularly in less developed governorates in which job creation is low.
Foreign migrants are also vulnerable to exploitative methods, weak labor protection, and social marginalization. These risks are further aggravated by Iraq’s institutional vulnerability in law enforcement and inspection systems. Safeguarding the rights of foreign workers, especially women in domestic labor will require legal reforms and capacity building in involved ministries.
Political and economic instability
Iraq remains beleaguered by chronic governance issues, with political instability and economic vulnerability influencing every aspect of national planning. Regional instability, sectarian tensions, and inadequate public institutions aggravate migration-related challenges. On this score, the success of the plan is not merely dependent on migration-associated reforms, but on enhanced public sector accountability and service delivery overall.
Moreover, high youth unemployment, limited industrial diversification, and over-reliance on oil revenues limit Iraq’s ability to absorb returns sustainably and create a context for migration to contribute to national development positively.
Migration as a double-edged development tool
The strategy promotes migration as a major driver of development, with features including family reunification, diaspora mobilization, and tracking employment trends online. It also encourages circular migration as well as skills-pairing schemes to match the labor force with national development plans.
Claudio Cordone, UNICEF Deputy Special Representative in Iraq, stressed that migration should be considered “a matter of dignity, not a matter of survival.” The wording captures the strategy’s ambition to create a shift in the narrative from migration as the last resort, to migration as a possibility within an overall life plan. However, turning this vision into real outcomes will mean new institutions, political will, and social trust. Without robust accountability mechanisms, there is a risk that the goals of the strategy have aspirational appeal, but not functional capacity.
Aligning with global migration governance
Iraq’s designation as a Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Champion Country marks Iraq’s growing engagement on the global policy agenda concerning migration. Iraq’s designation is equally an honor and an obligation: Iraq has to be an example of a model of best practice and better migration that protects rights and will have to report on this progress before 2026 and the International Migration Review Forum.
The articulation of the strategy with GCM objectives like ending irregular migration, enhancing border management, and building conditions for return places it within a global framework that ensures cooperation transnationally. It also points towards the region’s promise of more coordinated migration management that balances sovereignty with mutual responsibility.
This person has touched on the topic, highlighting the necessity of harmonized, evidence-informed migration policies sensitive to both humanitarian needs and imperatives based on socio-economic development:
Where We Are Right Now
— Stephanie Starr (@StephanieStarrC) August 19, 2025
✅Iraq just checked off Stage 2 (oil revenue unity).
✅Stage 3 and 4 (salary stability + non-oil revenue growth) are actively progressing.
✅Stage 5 (US withdrawal) is timed for Sept 2025–2026.
Why This Is Important:
1. HCL Alignment
✅The oil & gas law /… https://t.co/YSjDPDP7uH pic.twitter.com/U53CeHgjjA
Their assessment recommends the broader applicability of Iraq’s policy beyond its borders, as more countries grapple with complex streams of migration fueled by conflict, climate, and economic shifts.
Iraq’s national migration policy 2025 may be a turning point towards framing migration as a tool of development, rather than a symptom of instability. Whether the plan is able to overcome institutional hurdles will make it a model or a failure in regional migration policy. The coming years will tell how Iraq reconciles the promise and pressure of achieving a visionary vision into sustainable change.
