The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) has recently published an updated Country of Origin Information (COI) report on the security situation in Iraq. The report provides information on armed actors and the impact of conflict on civilians in the country between 1 August 2020 – 31 October 2021. It includes updated and relevant context information for the assessment of international protection status determination for Iraqi asylum seekers, notably subsidiary protection. The reports will also be the basis for EUAA’s country guidance development exercise on Iraq in 2022.

The report entitled Iraq: Security Situation is part of a series of Iraq COI country-reports produced in the last two years, and should be read together with Iraq: Key socio-economic indicators report published in November 2021, and Iraq: Targeting of Individuals published in January 2022.

Since June 2021, Iraqis have lodged increasing numbers of applications for international protection in EU+ countries.¹ The number of monthly applications has fluctuated between 1 300 and 1 700 between August 2020 and May 2021.² The main receiving country for Iraqis has been Germany (accounting for more than half of all Iraqi applications between August 2020 and August 2021), followed by Greece, Austria and Belgium.³ Recently, however, Iraqi applications have risen quickly in Lithuania and Latvia as a result of the surge in irregular border crossings from Belarus. The latest asylum trends for applicants from Iraq, and other countries of origin, can be found on the EUAA website.