ERBIl, Kurdistan Region - The issue of migration must be addressed within the framework of human rights principles, a senior United Nations official told Rudaw on Tuesday in response to a question about the state of migration policy in Germany, following the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)'s landslide victory in state elections.
“The [UN] Secretary General [Antonio Guterres] has always believed that issues having to deal with migration need to be dealt with holistically between the countries of origin, the countries of destination, and the countries of transit,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, told Rudaw's Namo Abdullah.
“They need to be dealt with in a way that is humane and that respects not only the law, but also human dignity,” Dujarric affirmed.
According to preliminary results, the AfD on Sunday received 43.8 percent of the votes in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliamentary elections, securing 39 seats in the legislature - just three seats short of an outright majority.
Shortly after the results were announced, AfD co-chair Alice Weidel vowed to carry out “the biggest deportation” of migrants in Germany's history within 100 days of taking office.
In the lead-up to the ballot, the head of the AfD's parliamentary bloc, Oliver Kirchner, said the party supports accommodative policies only toward legal migrants who want "to live together with us" and who "let us live as our culture desires."
"We want to deport those who are here illegally, and we want to deport criminals who do not belong here," he told Rudaw.
In Germany’s 2025 federal elections, the AfD secured 152 seats in the 630-seat federal legislature (Bundestag), preceded by the alliance between the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) that had succeeded in forming the government and appointing Freidrich Merz.
Merz on Monday stated that the AfD’s victory has shaken the CDU “to its very foundations” and would have “consequences” reaching well beyond the region “It is an election result we cannot simply move past as if nothing happened,” he said.
Germany has historically maintained high acceptance rates for asylum seekers and war refugees, offering long-term residency and pathways to citizenship. Despite recent economic slowdowns, the country continues to face a significant structural labor shortage driven by an aging population.
More than one million Syrian refugees have been granted asylum in Germany, with the overwhelming majority arriving during the Syrian Civil War (2011 - 2024).
The Turkish diaspora - numbering more than 1.5 million - is a long-established community in Germany that began settling during the Gastarbeiter - ‘guest worker’ era - in the 1960s.
Meanwhile, the number of Iraqi refugees increased significantly after the Islamic State (ISIS) captured large parts of the country in 2014, reaching more than 285,000 by 2025.
As for Iran, Germany has long been a top destination for Iranian secular dissidents and political refugees have left the country, especially since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with their community in Germany now exceeding 145,000 people.
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