Khanaqin students in limbo: Degrees unrecognized by Baghdad

Shafaq News/ In Khanaqin, a disputed district in Diyala province between Baghdad and Erbil, over 5,000 university students find themselves trapped in legal uncertainty, waiting for a degree recognition.

The three Garmian University colleges in Khanaqin—Humanities, Science and Technology, and Physical Education—operate under the Kurdish Ministry of Higher Education and graduate hundreds of students annually. However, their degrees are not recognized by Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education, which argues the institutions were built on federal land outside the Garmian region's administrative jurisdiction.

The roots of the problem go back to 2006 when the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began building an arts college in Khanaqin. It later came under Garmian University in 2014, but no official federal approvals were obtained.

One of the top students from the College of Humanities, Razan Majid, told Shafaq News, “We are living in legal, financial, and psychological limbo. We’re excluded from federal employment programs, including the recent top-graduate hiring initiative.”

Despite several visits by investigative committees from Baghdad, the federal government has refused to grant recognition. “These committees focused on administrative boundaries, not the students’ rights,” Majid noted.

Khanaqin’s local administrator, Jawad Fayyadallah, confirmed that all student demands had been submitted to federal authorities but emphasized that a solution requires a “sovereign decision from Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, MP Harem Kamal of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a prominent political party in the Kurdistan Region, said in a press conference that he would raise the issue with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani.