In 2025, Iraq maintained the fragile stability it has enjoyed in recent years despite regional turmoil. On November 11, Iraq held parliamentary elections. However, deteriorating government services, environmental degradation, continued repression and limitations on civic space, and the passage of draconian laws rolling back rights remained key areas of concern.
In January, Iraq underwent a comprehensive human rights review at the UN Human Rights Council. Member states criticized Iraq for its use of the death penalty after unfair trials, restrictions on free expression and assembly, and impunity for serious abuses by state-affiliated armed groups and security forces. Key recommendations included imposing a moratorium on executions, reforming or repealing discriminatory laws, passing domestic violence protections, ensuring freedom of expression and peaceful protest, strengthening the independence of the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, ratifying outstanding treaties, and guaranteeing equal access to services and rights for displaced people and residents of the Kurdistan Region.
Sporadic violence and clashes between armed groups and federal forces throughout the year put civilians’ lives at risk and underscored the state’s inability to impose authority over these groups. In September, Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi armed group that is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), released Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli scholar whom they had kidnapped in March 2023.
A government investigative committee found that a deadly fire in a Kut shopping mall in July was the result of failures in public safety regulation and enforcement, once again raising broader concerns about negligence and corruption.
Women’s and Girls’ Rights
Women and girls in Iraq continued to struggle against patriarchal norms embedded in Iraq’s legal system. Iraq’s penal code enables impunity for male violence against women and girls, including provisions that allow the husband to punish his wife, parents to discipline their children, and mitigated sentences for violent acts including murder for so-called “honorable motives.” The penal code also allows perpetrators of rape or sexual assault to escape prosecution or have their sentences quashed if they marry their victim.
On February 17, an amendment to Iraq’s Personal Status Law entered into force. The amendment allows couples concluding a marriage contract to choose whether the Personal Status Law of 1959 or a Personal Status Code (moudawana), developed by the Shia Ja’afari school of Islamic jurisprudence, would govern their marriage, divorce, children’s guardianship and care, and inheritance. By effectively establishing separate legal regimes with different rights accorded to different sects, the amendment undermines the right to legal equality for all Iraqis found in article 14 of the constitution and international human rights law.
On August 27, parliament passed the Ja’afari Personal Status Code without discussion or debate. The Code includes multiple provisions that roll back hard-won women’s rights. For example, the Code:
- Allows a husband to convert his marriage contract to be governed by the Code instead of the Personal Status Law without the consent or knowledge of his wife.
- Allows a husband to divorce his wife without informing her nor obtaining her consent.
- Automatically transfers responsibility and care of children to the father after age seven, regardless of the best interests of the child.
- Allows a wife to stipulate in the marriage contract that no polygamy or divorce can take place without her consent, but if the husband breaches these obligations, the marriage or divorce remains valid, though he will be considered “sinful.”
Iraq’s parliament in 2025 failed once again to pass a long-awaited anti-domestic violence law. This law has been stalled for over a decade despite persistent advocacy from civil society groups and women’s rights organizations. Survivors of gender-based violence had limited access to shelter or justice. While there were a small number of underground shelters for women in federal Iraq run by local NGOs, they faced regular criticism and lack of support, and over the years they have been attacked by families and raided by authorities.
Kurdistan Region Salaries and Public Services
In May 2025, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) failed to pay public sector salaries after the federal government in Baghdad withheld funds. Since 2014, Baghdad has intermittently withheld Erbil’s share of the federal budget, using payments as leverage to force concessions in negotiations over oil revenues.
As of September 15, salaries for May and June were paid late, and salaries for July and August had yet to be paid. Baghdad’s withholding public sector salaries has directly affected the quality and provision of public services in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), including health care and education.
The KRG's failure to pay the salaries of public-school employees has also threatened students' right to education. In protest of nonpayment of salaries, teachers and school administrators have frequently gone on strike, leaving students out of the classroom. Health workers, too, have frequently gone on strike over nonpayment of salaries, limiting services to emergency care. Many doctors, facing mounting financial pressure, have turned to private practice, reducing capacity of public hospitals and health clinics and lowering the quality of care for patients who cannot pay for private services.
Right to Electricity
In 2025, Iraq’s electricity sector faced severe strain, particularly during the summer months, imperiling Iraqis’ right to electricity. In July, the Ministry of Electricity stated that reduced Iranian gas supplies had caused a loss of 3,800 megawatts from the power grid, causing some power plants to shut down or reduce output. On August 11, a record-breaking heatwave caused temperatures of up to 52°C, suddenly increasing energy demand, overloading power systems and causing blackouts across the central and southern governorates.
The government’s failure to provide electricity has led Iraqis to rely on heavily polluting and expensive diesel generators. These large generators, often placed in densely populated areas, threaten Iraqis’ right to a clean and healthy environment, and their right to health. The World Health Organization classifies diesel exhaust as a Type 1 carcinogen.
The KRG continued rolling out the Runaki Project, launched at the end of 2024, whose goal is to provide continuous electricity from the national grid across the KRI. As of September, 3.7 million people in the KRI, about half the population, received continuous electricity.
Environment and Human Rights
Iraq is among the most vulnerable countries to global warming and faces various environmental crises, including droughts, desertification, increased frequency and severity of sandstorms, pollution, and rising temperatures.
Yet even as Iraq suffers from the effects of climate change, it continues to contribute to its cause. Iraq is the world's sixth largest oil producer, but is third after Russia and Iran in gas flaring, a wasteful process of burning methane gas during oil extraction. Flaring emits CO2 and methane into the atmosphere and Iraqi flaring accounts for nearly 10 percent of the flaring emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide.
Communities living near gas flares increasingly report health harms, including respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, raising questions for the Iraqi government and its partner oil companies about the persistence of this practice and who or what may be responsible.
A growing environmental movement in Iraq seeks to address environmental degradation, help prepare Iraq to adapt to global warming, and promote Iraq’s transition away from a fossil fuels-based economy. Their efforts, like those of activists across the civil society space, continue to be met with harassment, intimidation, and threats.
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
On April 27, 2024, Iraq’s parliament passed an amendment to the country’s existing “Law on Combatting Prostitution,” No. 8 of 1988, punishing same-sex relations with a penalty of between 10 and 15 years in prison. The law also allows for a prison term between 1 and 3 years for people who undergo or perform gender-affirming medical interventions and for “imitating women.” The law provides for 7 years in prison and a fine between 10 million Iraqi dinars (US$7,700) and 15 million dinars ($11,500) for “promoting homosexuality,” which the law does not define. Media outlets continued to comply with an August 2023 directive from the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission ordering all media outlets to replace the term “homosexuality” with “sexual deviance” in their published and broadcast language and banning the use of the term “gender.”
The digital targeting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and violence against them, including killings, abductions, torture, and sexual violence by armed groups in Iraq continued to be met with impunity. Iraqi authorities have also targeted LGBT people using a range of vague provisions in Iraq’s penal code aimed at policing morals and public indecency and limiting freedom of expression.