To systematically investigate Germany’s MENA policies and isolate its priorities from political, social, and economic realities in the target region, outlines the innovative core of this research project. The proposed paper focusses on a subfield of German foreign Policy - development cooperation - in the MENA region and its effectiveness in non-democratic rule with regard to mitigating migration. The 2013 coalition agreement of the German federal government assigns particular responsibility to manage migration to its Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and its implementing agencies. Particular attention is therefore drawn to the literature on the »migration hump« (Martin/Taylor 1993), as well as on the »migration-development nexus«. The latter concludes that policies designed to support development instead of migration generally fail, as they isolate root causes of forced migration from systemic deficiencies, global power and inequality (Castles/Miller 2009; King/Collyer 2016; IOM 2005; Nyberg-Sorensen et al. 2002). The purpose of this paper is to firs lay out the core reasons of forced migration that are immanent in authoritarian rule and then contrast them to the priorities of German development aid in the MENA between 2015 and 2020. The paper finds out that isolating root causes of forced migration from the logics of authoritarian rule, as dealt with in German development aid, will exacerbate the causes of people fleeing. Although this research focuses on Germany, both its research question and the methodology allows for transferrable implications and insights into other cases.