JAKARTA - IOM Indonesia said it reached more than 285,000 people through 30 projects in 2025, according to its new 2025 Year in Review, published on May 17. The report covers labour migration, trafficking protection, refugee support, maritime border management and missing-migrant monitoring.
The report’s largest labour figure is 296,948 Indonesian migrant worker placements in 2025. IOM uses the number to place its work inside Indonesia’s regular migration system, where overseas employment remains concentrated in Asia-Pacific destinations.
The Ministry for Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers gave the same 2025 placement total in a January 27 release.
The ministry said Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan were the top five destination countries, and that the total exceeded the national target of 259,144 placements. It also recorded 2,800 migrant worker complaints in 2025, including complaints about return, unpaid wages, termination, health problems and immigration issues.
IOM’s report gives a wider reason for treating those figures as a regional issue. “Indonesia sits at the centre of regional migration dynamics as the world’s largest archipelagic state, bordering eight countries and serving as a key hub,” the report said.
Protection services made up another part of the 2025 review. IOM Indonesia said it provided support to 646 victims of trafficking, vaccination assistance to 1,874 refugees, and mental health and psychosocial support to 5,361 people. The report does not give a gender, age, nationality or province breakdown for the trafficking victims in those headline figures.
The report also links migration governance to sea-route risk. IOM Indonesia’s separate Missing Migrants Project annual report, published on February 2, recorded 177 confirmed migrant deaths and 460 missing migrants in 2025. The project counts deaths and disappearances during international migration, including at international borders and along migration routes.