ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Amnesty International on Monday urged Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s government to address systemic human rights abuses, protect fundamental freedoms and end impunity, three months after the government adopted its 2026-2029 ministerial program.
In an open letter to Zaidi, Amnesty International said there had been little progress in delivering commitments to strengthen human rights, empower women and support independent civil society since the program was adopted in mid-May, framing it as an “ongoing systemic impunity” that “is rooted in years of unaddressed state abuses and historic violations across the country.”
“This Government must chart a new course for Iraq, in particular for those whose human rights have been violated with impunity for too long,” said Razaw Salihy, Amnesty’s Iraq researcher, naming women and girls, detainees, families of the forcibly disappeared, human rights defenders, activists and media workers.
The new Iraqi government’s 2026-2029 program, approved by the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, sets 139 priorities across 14 sectors, including human rights, women and children and calls for strengthening Iraq’s human rights framework, protecting children, curbing societal violence and developing leadership programs for women in government and political life.
Amnesty said women and girls continue to face inadequate protection from violence, including femicide, “as draft domestic violence legislation – introduced more than a decade ago – remains stalled in Iraqi parliament.”
Salihy urged Zaidi to “prioritize the adoption of comprehensive legislation against gender-based violence, ensure prompt and impartial investigations into attacks on activists, end the use of ‘public morality’ campaigns” which “undermine freedom of expression and peaceful dissent and remove restrictions and any form of interference on independent media.”
Amnesty further addressed amendments to Iraq’s Personal Status Code adopted in August 2025, saying they undermine the equality of women and girls before the law.
The report raised alarm over intimidation, judicial harassment and physical violence utilized against civil society activists, journalists, and human rights defenders, for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly.
“Peaceful protesters demanding basic rights, including during demonstrations in June and July 2026 against electricity cuts in the southern city of al-Kut, continue to be met with unlawful force by security forces and detentions,” said the report, citing the killing of activist Yanar Mohammed in Baghdad on March 2 and an attempted killing of another activist in Babel governorate on April 21 on which authorities had announced investigations but provided no public information on their progress.
The organization has previously documented the lack of accountability for abuses committed during the 2019 Tishreen protests.
Thousands of Iraqi people took to the streets in nationwide demonstrations in October 2019, which later came to be known as the Tishreen movement, protesting the country’s poor economic conditions, unemployment, foreign interference, and overall corruption.
Amnesty further criticized prison conditions, citing overcrowding, inadequate sanitation and limited access to health care. It said thousands of people, primarily convicted of terrorism-related offenses, remain at risk of execution despite documented fair-trial violations.
“This Government must demonstrate unequivocal resolve in ending the long-standing denial of truth and justice to the anguished families of the thousands of victims of enforced disappearance by revealing their fate and providing adequate reparations for the harm suffered,” Salihy said.
She also called on Zaidi to “immediately establish an official moratorium on all executions” and guarantee justice for survivors of torture “without further delay.”
Lastly, Amnesty highlighted the fate of thousands of men and boys who were arbitrarily arrested or abducted and forcibly disappeared following military operations against Islamic State, citing at least 643 people abducted from Saqlawiya in Anbar province in 2016 “whose fate remains unknown.”
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