.jpeg&w=3840&q=75)
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Over 24,000 of the nearly 40,000 people who applied for asylum in Germany for the first time in the first half of 2026 arrived without identification documents, German migration authorities said Wednesday amid a decade-long waves of migration from the Kurdistan Region.
"The lack of written documents can be due to various reasons. Fundamentally, this reveals nothing about the person's right to protection," the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees told Rudaw’s Kehy Mahmoud.
The spokesperson clarified several factors behind the absence of identification, including asylum seekers losing documents along the migration route.
The Kurdistan Region has seen repeated waves of youth migration over the past decade, largely driven by unemployment, economic hardship, and the search for better opportunities abroad.
According to the migration office's statistics, 39,646 people applied for asylum in Germany for the first time between January and June 2026. Only 15,338 individuals carried official identification, while 24,308 were undocumented.
The office explained that an applicant's account regarding migration to Germany serves as the primary basis for evaluation, noting that all applicants are required to cooperate in establishing their identities.
"To verify the identity and origin of undocumented asylum seekers, we rely on linguistic assessments," the office added.
German authorities indicated that they use technical procedures to establish applicants' backgrounds, noting that while linguistic assessments are conducted for individuals arriving from Middle Eastern countries, determining which of them are Kurdish remains a "very difficult" task.
The Federal Office processed 120,189 initial and follow-up applications during that period, granting protection in over a third of cases. Authorities rejected 51,656 applications, while 22,034 cases were resolved through other measures.
