How Iraq’s Legal System Fails Women and Girls

Earlier this year, a teenage girl walking along the Corniche in Basra was brutally assaulted by a group of 17 men. The attack, captured on video and widely shared online, sparked outrage among Iraqi women, who demanded that those responsible face the full force of the law.

Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Founder of the NGO Nadia’s Initiative, wrote: “This reflects a serious failure to protect women and girls. I urge Iraqi authorities to hold the perpetrators accountable.”

Yet none of the men have been sentenced and remain free, and the teenage girl in the video has since become suicidal. 

This is not an isolated incident. Just two years earlier, sixteen men attacked a teenage girl at a motorcycle rally in Sulaymaniyah. In April 2026, human rights defender Yanar Mohammad was shot and killed outside her home by two unidentified gunmen. And in early June of this year, 15-year-old Kawthar Bashar al-Husayjawi was killed by members of her extended family in al-Nahrawan, Baghdad, after refusing a second forced marriage and fleeing her home. She had already endured a child marriage.

An estimated one million women and girls in Iraq are at risk of gender-based violence, and nearly one in four women report having experienced abuse by an intimate partner. Despite these alarming figures, the crisis shows little sign of easing—in many respects, it is growing worse.

In fact, 40% of respondents to the 2024-2025 Arab Barometer survey said that gender-based violence had increased in the past year. Official statistics confirm this perception: In 2025, the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights recorded 36,000 cases of domestic violence — a 150% increase from the previous year.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, where this there is a law on domestic violence, human rights organizations have found that it is “little more than ink on paper,” and substantial hurdles exist for women seeking justice. The absence of comprehensive legislation and other recourses addressing gender-based violence, ranging from sexual harassment to honor killings, has created a culture of impunity where perpetrators are not deterred and where women and girls are facing the consequences.

A culture of impunity

Sara Robert, a young woman living in Ankawa, described an incident where her male teacher was harassing her at school. When she reported it to the headmaster, no action was taken to protect her or to instill consequences for the teacher.

“I thought ‘she is a woman. She will understand. She is just like me.’ Nothing was done,” said Robert. It was only when Robert told her male friend that the teacher stopped harassing her. “If I did not know that friend, I would have failed and repeated the whole year, and he would have done the same thing over and over again.” While the teacher has stopped harassing Robert, he is still employed at the school. 

According to Arab Barometer, 52% of respondents said a woman experiencing abuse could find support from a male family member, compared with just 34% who believed she could rely on a female family member. Confidence in formal support systems was even lower: only 41% expressed trust in the local police, 11% in civil society organizations, and 8% in hospitals or clinics.

“Gender-based violence in Iraq is deeply underreported due to social stigma, fear of retaliation, and a widespread lack of trust in state institutions,” said Hiba Abdulwahhab, an Iraqi researcher and educator focused on women’s rights. She added that “most cases go underreported because women anticipate being blamed, dismissed, or further exposed to harm.” Current state institutions are not built to support survivors, and many report negative experiences with the male-dominated law enforcement and judiciary system. 

Existing legislation contributes to an environment where harassment and violence against women and girls is permissible and where there is a culture of impunity for perpetrators. Abdulwahhab explained that there is no legislation criminalizing sexual harassment and domestic violence. A 2012 draft law on domestic violence championed by women’s rights activists in the country was never passed. 

In theory, survivors can seek justice under Iraq's Penal Code No. 111 of 1969, which criminalizes rape and assault. In practice, however, the law is rarely enforced. Cases often require an extraordinarily high evidentiary burden, and loopholes within the code allow perpetrators to receive reduced sentences if their crimes are deemed to have been committed for “honorable motives.”

“The law seems to be absent. Recent regulations have been arbitrary. They have stripped liberties and freedoms of women,” said lawyer and human rights activist Zainab Jawad, speaking on a panel at the Atlantic Council. 

Recent amendments to the personal status law that allow citizens to choose sect-specific religious courts to oversee matters of the family instead of the secular personal status code, as well as the introduction of the Ja’fari law, have only further eroded protections for women and girls. Maysoon Al-Damluji, a British-Iraqi architect and former member of the Iraqi parliament, has heard from her Kurdish colleagues that there “are around 800 divorced Ja’fari women that are refugees. They worry that custody of their children will be taken away from them, so they escaped to Erbil, where they do not have a job or income.” She added that “the judiciary has to reform, apply the constitution, and rid itself from the influences of political parties.”

In Iraqi Kurdistan, complaints that fall under domestic violence are legislated under private law. However, the domestic violence law does not prioritize the protection of the survivor: only the survivor can initiate a legal proceeding, there is a mandatory reconciliation process between the survivor and the perpetrator and a maximum penalty of three years as domestic violence is considered to be a misdemeanor. In Erbil, there is reportedly only one investigative judge assigned to domestic violence cases, among other cases, and he is not specialized either. The current legal system in both Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan disempowers women and girls from seeking redress and justice for the harms they have endured. 

Pushed out of public life 

This has created a broad culture of impunity in Iraq, where perpetrators of gender-based violence including sexual harassment are not deterred by legislation or consequences. “We still see the perpetrators dancing in the streets,” said Jawad.

Jawad is speaking literally: earlier this year, a video went viral on X showed a family in Baghdad celebrating the killing of their 15-year-old daughter who refused to marry her cousin. 

As gender-based violence rises and perpetrators face few consequences, many women and girls are being pushed out of public life. In Ankawa, residents describe growing concerns about safety, citing the expansion of brothels and nightlife venues in the Christian-majority town and the harassment women face in public spaces. Robert described how men from across the country are flooding into Christian-majority towns like Ankawa and harassing women, stopping their cars and trying to talk to them.

“Go walk as a girl and try to walk at night after 7:00pm — you cannot. It is annoying, and it is difficult. I tried once and never went back to be honest,” said Robert, “I don’t go out at night alone. I always have my cousins with me or my sister with me.”

In other cities, backlash against women’s rights is widespread. Jawad spoke of a campaign that mobilized to protest women the workforce. “They demonized working women, describing them as dishonored and indecent.”

Al-Damluji said the climate has also shifted within universities. “You’re not allowed to talk about gender or women’s movements unless you are attacking activism,” she said. “If this is not gender-based violence, I don’t know what is.”

While women’s rights groups continue to advocate for legal reform, they are increasingly facing intimidation themselves. Coalition 188, a group of prominent female lawyers, journalists, and activists, holds monthly protests in Baghdad’s al-Tahrir Square but has faced police harassment and arrests. Many activists, including Jawad, have left Baghdad out of concern for their safety. Others have begun publishing anonymously online to avoid retaliation.

These activists have been tirelessly working to enact legislation to protect women and girls — but without political will and institutional reform, hope is bleak.