Journalist Khamael Khalifa interviews Lt. Gen. Nashat Ibrahim al-Khafaji, director general of Iraq’s Civil Status, Passports and Residence Directorate, on Dijlah TV.
Iraq to scrap the residence card and fold addresses into the national ID
BAGHDAD — The Interior Ministry is moving to abolish the separate residence card, the proof-of-address document Iraqis have had to produce for most official transactions, by linking address records to the unified national ID, with teams now working in Erbil, Duhok and Sulaymaniyah.
“The national card is a document that replaces the civil status ID, the nationality certificate and the residence card, and all the information is available in the electronic system,” said Lt. Gen. Nashat Ibrahim al-Khafaji, director general of Civil Status, Passports and Residence, on Dijlah TV. Changes of address can now be entered directly under a person’s national ID number. “We have now begun very rapid steps, with our working team present in Erbil, Duhok and Sulaymaniyah, to link the residence card to the national card, in preparation for moving toward a bigger step, which is dispensing with the residence card completely,” he said.
Nearly all citizens now hold the national ID, he said, with Nineveh slower because of its security history and reinforced with staff from other governorates. State institutions have been told to stop accepting the old civil status ID and nationality certificate.
The integration rests on Article 35 of the National ID Card Law, which makes the card a substitute for all three older documents with a single identification number across state records. The government reviewed the plan in December 2025, and Iraq began phasing out the paper documents in 2024. Diplomatic missions increasingly require the national ID for services including electronic passports.