World Youth Day in Iraq: What about the “Vision 2030”?

Published by PIHN Campaign | Observatory to Protect Human Rights Defenders in Iraq –12 August 2025

On World Youth Day, which is celebrated annually to renew commitment to youth rights and their role in development and stability, a stark contradiction emerges in Iraq: while the government issues official statements about its determination to achieve development and empower youth, the reality reveals a significant failure in its international commitments and a direct betrayal of its declared promises.

During 2021, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, in cooperation with the United Nations, launched “Iraq Youth Vision 2030,” with the participation of the Ministry of Culture and international bodies such as UNICEF and UNFPA, and with Swedish support. The aim was to develop a roadmap for empowering youth economically, socially, and culturally, and enhancing their political participation. However, this vision has not been translated into reality on the ground.

On the international stage, Iraq, represented by the Ministry of Youth, responded in New York in 2023 to challenges of sustainable development with mere presence and slogans, affirming the government’s attempts to attract youth energies for field work and improve their conditions through sports and cultural programs. It was highlighted in the speech that this recognition has not been transformed into tangible projects in the face of poor services and unemployment.

In contrast, the numbers are alarming: youth constitute about 19.6% of the total population, but unemployment rates have exceeded one million young people, most of whom are graduates without real opportunities, while millions suffer from poverty and poor health, without clear policies to rescue them.

When youth took to the streets demanding reform, successive governments responded with repression or silence. In 2019, youth demands turned into a real uprising against government corruption and sectarian quota policies. However, the response was a widespread campaign of intimidation and arrests, in addition to the decline of justice and transparency.

Proposed legislation at the time contributed to narrowing civil space, under the guise of laws such as “combating terrorism” or “organizing gatherings.” Judicial lawsuits became a tool to silence various voices, and youth were placed under permanent surveillance.

The crisis is not limited to politics, but the state’s desire to control public space has reached the level of condemning expression on social media. The organized “low content” campaigns launched by the Ministry of Interior targeted creative youth and video bloggers, and imprisonment was not an empty threat without execution.

All of this confirms that World Youth Day in Iraq reveals a striking contradiction: while the government issues international commitments and human rights slogans, reality practices the exact opposite. How many of these statements have become mere slogans on paper?

In our monitoring of the situation of activists who participated in previous protests, stories are repeated in various forms, but with a single timeline: a call from an unknown number threatening murder or kidnapping, or raiding homes at dawn, or a “routine” summons to a security center that turns into personal harassment and a long interrogation.

These practices have made many young people withdraw completely from the civil space, choosing silence, not out of conviction, but because they now see the price of speaking out as greater than their capacity.

One human rights defender, who preferred not to reveal his name, said: “After 2019, what we learned is that the state is not a protector for us, but we see it as a direct adversary, even international organizations that tried to help us faced difficulty in communicating with us because any cooperation might be interpreted as ‘intelligence’ in the eyes of the security agencies.”

This poisoned atmosphere is not a product of the moment, but a result of a systematic policy that extended across different governments. All of them united in one point: the desire to control youth instead of empowering them. The laws that are used under the slogan of “protecting societal values” or “protecting security” have turned into a legal weapon that threatens the lives of activists, while Iraq’s international commitments, such as Security Council resolutions 2419 and 2250, remained mere texts framed in ministerial files, specifically related to youth, peace, and security.

In 2020, the government announced a program to empower youth through small grants and entrepreneurship projects. However, subsequent local reports showed that most of these grants did not reach their beneficiaries or went to groups politically affiliated with the authority. The same pattern is repeated in international training programs, where participants are selected through partisan recommendations instead of opening the door for real representation of youth from all governorates.

In the digital space, the government closed the few remaining windows of freedom through content prosecution, and issued arrest warrants against youth influencers and bloggers, not for incitement or hatred, but merely for publishing videos that mock officials or criticize government performance. This policy pushed many digital bloggers to self-censor or distance themselves, fearing abuse in prisons.

Iraqi youth today do not need statements, but rather protection for human rights defenders, and an environment where they can participate socially and politically, express themselves, and organize without fear of imprisonment, loss of professional opportunities, or defamation. We are facing an opportunity to reconsider the legacy of international agreements and youth. However, this requires stopping intimidation policies, rebuilding trust, and implementing real programs, not just speaking in their name.

World Youth Day, in official discourse, is an occasion to celebrate “heroes” and “future aspirations” and “development.” But for the majority of Iraqi youth, it is an annual reminder of unfulfilled promises, commitments that have failed them, and opportunities that have been deliberately closed in their faces. In light of this reality, the celebration becomes merely a commemorative photo taken in front of shiny slogans, hiding behind them a reality where youth feel unrepresented, unsafe, and unheard.

Visit 7oqoq – Observatory to Protect Human Rights Defenders in Iraq – to learn about their advocacy efforts.