Iraq: Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

We write in advance of the 98th pre-session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (“the Committee”) and its review of Iraq. This submission focuses on ill-treatment in government-run detention centers, corporal punishment, the right to education, unregistered marriages, and the repatriation and reintegration of Iraqi children detained in northeast Syria.

Ill-Treatment in Government-Run Detention Centers (articles 2, 3, 19, 24, 27, 28, 37, 39, and 40)

Government authorities detain children in overcrowded, unsanitary, and in some cases inhumane conditions.[1] A source within the prison system shared with Human Rights Watch in 2019 evidence including photos of overcrowded prison cells in Nineveh, from earlier that year, holding children and women on charges of Islamic State (ISIS) affiliation in conditions so degrading that they amounted to ill-treatment.[2]

In federal Iraq, children are sometimes detained with adults in severely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, with no access to education, rehabilitation, or contact with their families. As of early 2023, an estimated 100 children were being held with their mothers, many of whom are foreign nationals who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses, at Rusafa prison in Baghdad.[3] Children held in the Reformatory for Women and Children in Erbil report better conditions, including good food and separation from adult detainees. However, as of 2019, children suspected of ISIS association received no education, were confined to their rooms for up to 48 hours at a time, and were denied phone calls with their families during pretrial detention. Some also reported that reformatory guards beat them for perceived misbehavior. Human Rights Watch estimates that at the end of 2018, Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) authorities were detaining approximately 1,500 children for alleged ISIS affiliation. Many experienced horrific torture at the hands of detention center authorities.[4]

Detention authorities also ill-treat lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.[5] In eight cases documented by Human Rights Watch in 2021, abuses by armed groups and state actors, including arbitrary arrest and sexual violence, were against children as young as 15 at the time.

Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to call on the government of Iraq to:

• Set up a National Preventative Mechanism for the prevention of torture and ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture.
• Ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure.
• Ensure that the treatment of children who committed criminal acts as members of ISIS are in line with international children’s rights standards, including that detention is used only as a last resort and for the shortest period of time and that children are not detained with unrelated adults, and that measures are primarily targeted towards their rehabilitation and reintegration.
• Review detention center policies and procedures to ensure that detainees are moved to facilities that are equipped to meet basic international standards and are accessible to government inspection, and with regular access by independent monitors and relatives.
• Take all appropriate measures to end torture and other ill-treatment, summary killings, and other abuses, including those based on sexual orientation and gender expression and identity, and compensate all families of victims of unlawful killings and survivors of serious abuse.
• Investigate all credible allegations of torture and other detention-related abuses, dismiss any and all evidence, including confessions, obtained by torture, and punish those deemed responsible appropriately.

Corporal Punishment (articles 19, 24, and 28)

On December 10, 2018, a 9-year-old boy in Erbil died after being hit in the head by his teacher.[6] In Iraq, corporal punishment remains lawful. The Penal Code provides a defense to criminal liability for “the disciplining by parents and teachers of children under their authority within certain limits prescribed by law or by custom,”[7] but Iraq’s 2005 Constitution states that “all forms of violence and abuse in the family, school and society shall be prohibited.”[8] The 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey found that almost 60 percent of children aged 1-14 were exposed to corporal punishment, and 31 percent to severe physical punishment (such as hitting or slapping on the face, head, or ears).[9] 18 percent of caregivers believed that physical punishment is necessary.[10]

Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to:

• Ask the government of Iraq how recent cases of corporal punishment have been monitored and reported, and to provide recent data on the prevalence of violent discipline in schools.
• Call on the government of Iraq to ensure that all forms of violent discipline in all settings, including in the home, are explicitly prohibited.

Right to Education (article 28)

Access to education during the Covid-19 pandemic

From March 2020 to March 2022, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Iraqi schools were fully closed for 51 weeks and only partially open for 27 weeks.[11] While the government transitioned to various forms of distance learning, Human Rights Watch found several barriers to accessing education, including the compounding effects of armed conflict and new education costs.[12]

For example, in northern Iraq, a father told Human Rights Watch in June 2020 that none of his five children, aged between 8 and 15, had received any education since schools closed in February that year.[13] In Erbil, a teacher at a school for families who fled ISIS in 2014 and had not returned to their areas of origin “due to the mass destruction of infrastructure, including schools,” said many of her students’ families are poor. As a result, even though the Kurdistan Region’s education ministry started online education, “it is hard to cater for all the students, because not all of them are connected to the internet. They cannot afford internet costs.”[14] The teacher also said her school did not provide her equipment or financial assistance for online teaching. “I did not have internet prior to the school shutdown, and I was forced to adapt and try to get internet using 3G data on my phone… The connection is not reliable. I do not have unlimited access and I have to pay for the data that I use.”[15]

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Committee:

• Ask the Iraqi government how the extent of children’s learning loss due to Covid-19 school closures has been assessed, and what measures have been taken to remedy lost learning.

• Call on the government to strategically allocate educational resources to marginalized and low-income groups and those shown to have been particularly affected in their education during the pandemic.
• Call on the government to adopt measures to provide affordable, reliable, quality, and accessible internet, including targeted measures to provide free, equitable access to the internet for educational content, as well as to develop or expand device affordability and availability initiatives for schools and families. This should be carried out to the extent that online learning is used beyond Covid-19 school closures and in a manner that protects children’s privacy online.
• Commend the government of Iraq for providing two years of free pre-primary and free secondary education under its domestic law.

Protection of education from attack

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) identified at least 17 reports of attacks on schools in Iraq between 2020 and 2023.[16] Reported attacks also occurred sporadically in 2018 and 2019.[17] Many of the incidents involved improvised explosive devices (IEDs) placed in or near schools. Between 2020 and 2023, GCPEA also collected at least 17 reported incidents of attacks on students, teachers, and other education personnel, occurring in both the contexts of conflict violence and protest repression. It also identified over 75 incidents of military use of schools and universities.[18]

Iraq endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration in May 2015.[19] The Safe Schools Declaration[20] is an inter-governmental political commitment that provides countries the opportunity to express political support for the protection of students, teachers, and schools during times of armed conflict; the importance of the continuation of education during armed conflict; and the implementation of the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict. [21]

Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to:

• Ask the government of Iraq whether protections for schools from military use are included in any policies, rules, or trainings for Iraq’s armed forces.
• Recommend that the government incorporate the Safe Schools Declaration’s standards in domestic policy, military operational frameworks, and legislation, and share any good practices with other countries in the region.

• Recommend that the government impartially and systematically investigate attacks on students, teachers, and schools, and appropriately prosecute those responsible.

Unregistered Marriages (articles 7, 8, 18, 24, 26, 28, and 34)

Each year, tens of thousands of Iraqi couples enter into unregistered marriages. These marriages are officiated by religious leaders and are culturally accepted as valid marriages; however, they are not legally valid until they are registered with the Personal Status Court and the couple is issued a civil marriage contract. Frequently, people opt for unregistered marriages to circumvent marriage requirements in the Personal Status Law, particularly restrictions on child marriage, forced marriage, and polygamy. In addition, Iraqis living in ISIS-controlled territory between 2014 and 2017 who married were also only issued marriage certificates by ISIS, which are not recognized by the Iraqi state.[22]

Child marriage

Human Rights Watch has found that in Iraq unregistered religious marriages are functioning as loopholes enabling child marriage.[23] In 2021, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq reported that 22 percent of unregistered marriages involved girls under the age of 14.[24] Local partners told Human Rights Watch that they believe most unregistered marriages involved girls under 18. Over the last 20 years, rates of child marriage in Iraq have been steadily increasing.[25]

Iraq’s Personal Status Law sets the legal age for marriage at 18, or 15 with a judge’s permission, depending on the child’s “maturity and physical capacity.”[26] The consequences of child marriage for girls include increased risks of sexual and domestic violence, death during childbirth, mental health harms, and impeded access to education and employment.[27] Because of harmful gender norms, girls are frequently seen as economic burdens on a family, and marriage can be seen as a way to lift that burden, obtain a dowry, and perhaps secure their daughters’ future.[28] In Iraq, girls who are deprived of basic education are more likely to enter into child marriage and early childbearing.[29]

Access to public services and social protection

Iraq has discriminatory policies that link access to several public services and social protection schemes to an individual’s marital status. For example, girls and women are required to show proof that they are married to give birth in hospitals or access prenatal care. As a result, some are forced to opt for at-home births, increasing the risk of not having adequate medical support to address complications during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period. This risk is heightened in adolescent pregnancies.

Without a civil marriage contract, girls and women also have no legal protection or recourse to claim their rights to dowry, spousal maintenance, and inheritance in the event they are being denied it.[30] Article 57(1) of the Personal Status Law states that “the mother is more deserving of the custody and upbringing of the child, as long as the marriage is valid and after separation, unless the child in custody is harmed by this measure.” However, a condition is that the responsible parent has reached 18 years of age. Because religious marriages are often used to skirt domestic law on the legal age of marriage, affected girls may be trapped in abusive relationships for fear of losing their children.

Access to civil documentation

These barriers can also create negative downstream effects on the rights of children born into unregistered marriages. Under Iraq’s Birth and Death Registration Law of 1971, parents can only obtain birth certificates for babies born in wedlock, meaning children in unregistered marriages are unable to obtain any other identity document and are at risk of losing their legal identity or becoming stateless.[31]

Proof of paternity is also required to register a child’s birth. Iraqi law does not allow for the registration of a child under the name of just the mother, with the father’s identity listed as unknown or unspecified.[32] Thus, even though nationality can be passed from mother to child, single-parent families may still end up with stateless children. This problem additionally affects children born of rape and conflict-related sexual violence, whose mothers may not know or may not wish to disclose the identity of the father.

Without this crucial civil documentation, the child will be cut off from accessing most public services and social protection schemes in Iraq, including education, health care, employment, food distribution, housing, and social protection schemes.[33]

There are no provisions in Iraq’s Personal Status Law that punish religious leaders who officiate marriages outside the court and where such marriages are in violation of the law, enabling religious leaders to violate Iraqi law with impunity. It is possible to initiate prosecutions against religious leaders by using Article 240 of the Iraqi Penal Code, which punishes any person who contravenes an order issued by an official body. However, public prosecutors have never used this provision.

Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to call on the government of Iraq to:

• Adopt a national action plan to eliminate child marriage in Iraq and set the minimum age of marriage at 18 without exception.
• Reform the relevant laws governing citizenship and birth registration to permit the registration of all births and the obtention of Iraqi citizenship and associated legal documents.
• Amend the Penal Code and Personal Status Law to include punishments for religious leaders who officiate marriages in violation of the Personal Status Law.
• Allow children without documents to enroll in school and obtain education certificates.
• End all inquiries about the marital status of girls and women accessing health care and allow in-hospital births and prenatal care for all girls and women, regardless of their marital status.

Repatriation and reintegration of Iraqi children detained in northeast Syria (articles 3, 6, 9, 19, 24, 28, 37, and 39)

Several thousand Iraqis, most of them children, are detained in al-Hol and Roj, two locked, sprawling camps in northeast Syria primarily holding the wives, other adult female relatives, and children of male ISIS suspects. As of January 2024, they are among about 47,000 people from about 60 countries unlawfully detained in the camps, including more than 17,000 from Iraq.[34] Most of these detainees were rounded up in late 2018 or early 2019 by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as they toppled the last remnant of ISIS’s self-declared caliphate in northeast Syria. 

Iraq is to be commended for bringing home more than 10,000 Iraqis unlawfully detained as ISIS suspects and family members from northeast Syria – more than 7,000 from al-Hol camp, most of them women and children,[35] as well as up to 3,000 men and more than 200 boys who had been held in prisons.[36] Iraq has committed to repatriating the rest.

Nevertheless, Human Rights Watch is concerned about the deplorable conditions of detention for Iraqi nationals who have yet to be repatriated from northeast Syria. Although Iraq has increased efforts to assist returnees,[37] Human Rights Watch is concerned about inadequate shelter, including in detention centers for both adults and children, as well as insufficient food, water, healthcare, economic support, and other rehabilitation and reintegration assistance for those whom it has brought home.

Conditions for Iraqi Children Detained in Northeast Syria

Conditions in the camps and prisons in Northeast Syria are dire.[38] Health care, clean water, shelter, and education and recreation for children, are grossly inadequate. Mothers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they hide their children in their tents to protect them from sexual predators, abusive camp guards, and ISIS recruiters and fighters.[39] Children have drowned in sewage pits,[40] died in tent fires,[41] and been hit and killed by water trucks,[42] and hundreds have died from treatable illnesses.[43] Some younger children attend informal preschool, but most children have no access to education and have missed out on years of schooling.

Conditions are even worse in the prisons and makeshift detention centers where the SDF is detaining approximately 10,000 from about 20 countries, including about 2,000 who are boys or who were apprehended before they turned 18.[44] Some boys were detained when they were as young as 12.[45] In the prisons, overcrowding initially was so severe that many of the detainees slept shoulder to shoulder.[46] Sources including aid groups estimate that hundreds of detained boys have tuberculosis that was untreated for well over a year, that many are malnourished, and that some need specialized surgery or advanced treatment for wounds or other medical conditions.[47] Although sources have told Human Rights Watch that all Iraqi boys who had been held without charge in prisons have been repatriated to Iraq, we have received conflicting accounts as to whether Iraq has yet brought home all Iraqi male detainees and if not, whether those who remain include young men who have been unlawfully imprisoned since they were children.

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Committee ask the Iraqi government:

• What is the Iraqi government’s current timeline to finish repatriating all Iraqi nationals including children detained in northeast Syria as ISIS suspects or family members? Please include in your response your plans for men detained in prisons, as well as Iraqi men, women and children detained in Al-Hol and Roj camps.
• How many Iraqi males remain detained in northeast Syria for suspected ISIS ties and how many of these men were boys (males under age 18) when they were first placed in detention in northeast Syria? Are any Iraqi boys still detained in prisons for suspected ISIS ties?
• How many Iraqi boys who were repatriated from detention centers in northeast Syria are still detained in Iraqi prisons? What are the conditions of detention, including their access to water, medical care, education, recreation, and communication with family including visits? What is the level of humanitarian access for these boys? What are the government’s plans for them?
• How many Iraqi men (males aged 18 and over) whom Iraq has repatriated from northeast Syria are detained in Iraqi prisons? How many of these men were children when they were initially placed in prisons for ISIS suspects and family members in northeast Syria? What are the conditions of detention, including their access to water, medical care, education, recreation, and communication with family including visits? What is the level of humanitarian access for these men? What are the government’s plans for them?
• What are the conditions in Jeddah 1 camp? What steps are taken to ensure returnees temporarily placed in Jeddah 1 are prepared to return to their home communities before they go home, and what safeguards are in place to ensure these returns are safe and voluntary?

Human Rights Watch recommends that the Committee call on the Iraqi government to:

• Continue the repatriations, as a matter of urgent priority, of all Iraqi nationals arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria, giving precedence to children and other particularly vulnerable citizens in both camps and other places of detention.
• Provide returnees with rehabilitation and reintegration services, including medical and psychosocial support. Conduct individualized assessments to tailor assistance to each returnee’s particular circumstances, considering gender, age, educational needs, family situation, and cultural background.
• Ensure individuals lacking identity documents are able to access public services and other social protection schemes and ensure children without documents are able to enroll in schools.