It’s time to trust Iraqi youth with the country’s future

If Iraq is to collapse, it won’t be from bombs or ballots. It will be from the silence of a generation we failed to listen to. For far too long, Iraqi youth have been spoken of in the language of suspicion. As if their only destiny lies in protest squares, detention centres, or on smuggler boats bound for European borders. The state may regard them as a problem to pacify. Donors treat them as a statistic to file. Policymakers, it seems, are less interested in uniting the nation than in legislating its fractures. All the while, Iraq quietly loses its greatest asset, its youth.

Yet the truth remains defiantly clear: young Iraqis are not Iraq’s ticking time bomb, they are its only viable future.

Consider the reality. Iraq is the fifth most climate-vulnerable country on Earth. In 2023, over 140 days of dust storms choked Iraq’s skies. Now, in May 2025, as I sit writing through yet another haze of grit and ash, I wonder, how many more warnings do we need before we call this what it is: a crisis, not a season? Water scarcity is draining life from southern farmland, leaving once fertile soil saline and cracked. The sons and daughters of farmers are walking away, not just from their family’s land, but from a country that offers them no alternative. For their peers in the north, and frankly for the rest of Iraq, migration has ceased to be a distant dream of opportunity; it has become the only escape from a room whose walls are closing in with every passing day.

But despair is not the full story. In cities like Sulaymaniyah and Nasiriyah, young people organise environmental clean-ups with no government support. In Baghdad, tech hubs teach coding while the power flickers. In Erbil, artists carve out new narratives in a culture long hijacked by clerics and commanders. These efforts are not protests; they are proposals. And they demand a serious answer. Yet serious answers require serious reform.

Iraq’s education system is a relic of an industrial age, disconnected from today’s job market. While 92 per cent of children enrol in primary school, only 57 per cent make it through lower secondary education. Vocational training is sparse. It takes Iraqi youth an average of two years to land a first job, if they land one at all. Youth unemployment stands at 32 per cent, and rises further for women and university graduates.

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Even those who manage to navigate the system are condemned to a relentless cycle of political exclusion and civic fatigue. With only 16 per cent of youth bothering to engage in elections, the upcoming polls aren’t just a failure, they’re a funeral procession for hope, a stark reflection of a generation’s quiet surrender to a broken system. Trust in the judiciary and government hovers around a dismal 15 per cent. Volunteering rates are half the regional average.

The dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development programmes under the new U.S. administration has disrupted key youth initiatives in Iraq, including job creation, peacebuilding, and digital training. With youth unemployment exceeding 32 per cent, this withdrawal risks abandoning a generation already struggling for stability. If the Iraqi government wishes to step into the vacuum, it must not replicate the old errors. Ministries must stop co-opting youth for photo ops and begin funding them directly. Independent, youth-led NGOs need protection, not interference. Civic spaces should be expanded, not surveilled. And registering a grassroots organisation must not require the patience of a monk or the connections of a warlord. This isn’t charity; it’s a matter of survival.

We need a national youth strategy that treats young people as architects of the state, not inheritors of its rubble. That means reforming education with market needs in mind. Expanding mental health services and destigmatising care is a necessity. A 2023 data revealed that almost 30 per cent of young Iraqis reported depression and anxiety. How much longer can this silent crisis be ignored? Creating decentralised, accessible funds for youth entrepreneurs, especially beyond Baghdad and Erbil. Lowering the age of candidacy. Ending the criminalisation of peaceful protest. Protecting student unions. And above all, listening, because Iraq’s youth are already speaking. Loudly.

The 2024 Iraq national census tells a clear story: 60.2 per cent of Iraqis are in the working-age group, and 36.1 per cent are under 15. But demographics are not destiny. Without urgent, sustained investment, these figures are a forecast of failure.

Young Iraqis are not apathetic, they are exhausted. Not radicalised, but radicalised against incompetence. They are not lost, they are locked out. And if they are to flee this country, it will not be because they hate it. It will be because it refused to believe in them.

What would Iraq look like if we built it around their ambition, instead of our fear?

That’s a question worth answering, before someone else does it for us.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.