Iraqi women activists face death threats while fighting sexual violence

On a Baghdad street, a woman's phone captures a man resisting as she confronts him over indecent exposure and harassment. The video ends up on Instagram, posted by Sarah Jassim, a women's rights activist who has made it her work to document sexual abuse on behalf of Iraqi women too afraid or too constrained by social pressure to come forward themselves. Jassim frames the camera as a tool—evidence for potential lawsuits, or at minimum, a way to expose perpetrators to public shame. One of her posted videos led to the arrest of a policeman accused of harassing schoolgirls. But the cost of this work has been severe. Jassim has received death threats and threats of acid attacks. She has been accused of inciting public indecency simply for encouraging women to speak in a society built on their silence. She now spends most of her time at home, rarely venturing out, playing with her dog.

The legal landscape in Iraq offers little protection. The penal code contains no explicit terms for harassment or gender-based violence. A UN committee on discrimination against women reported in May that violence against women and girls in Iraq is widespread and under-reported, and urged authorities to repeal laws that allow rapists to escape punishment by marrying their victims, or that permit reduced sentences for so-called honor killings. For women seeking justice, the path is long and uncertain. A woman named Amal has been in court for about five years after her ex-husband repeatedly raped their daughter at gunpoint when the girl was under eighteen. Amal has medical documents and DNA evidence supporting her account. She recalls her daughter describing how the father placed his weapon on the bed and told her, "No-one will hear you if I kill you." The girl had bruises around her wrists from being held down, and her mouth was covered when she tried to scream. Amal rushed to police to report the assault, but her ex-husband is now on the run, and the case remains open. Amal could not afford legal representation while her ex-husband hired several lawyers. Her family turned away from her. She has lost faith that any court will rule in her favor.

The obstacles women face extend far beyond the courtroom. Many survivors have no independent income and nowhere to go. Iraq has very few shelters for abused women. Those that exist were established by Yanar Mohammed, an internationally recognized women's rights advocate who was murdered outside her house in Baghdad last March by armed men. The perpetrators remain unknown. Experts working for the UN Human Rights Council wrote in April that Mohammed had been receiving death threats and online abuse for years, believed to come from extremist religious militia. Other activists report that targeted attacks on their colleagues have been rising. Hanaa Edwar, another prominent women's rights activist, saw Mohammed just two days before she was killed. Edwar herself has been threatened. "There are no laws, no protection, and no justice for women in Iraq," she tells the BBC.

Mustafa Saadoon, head of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, describes the systemic failure plainly: a woman who reports sexual violence must first get past her family, then a police station, then a court, and at each door someone is likely to tell her to settle it quietly. A woman named Samira describes the constant edge of walking in the street after repeated harassment. Once, a man displayed pornography on his phone in her face on public transport. In another incident, a man followed her in his car for over ten minutes. When she found a police car and reported what had happened, the officers told her they had no authority to act. Samira does not tell her family about these incidents because she knows they will respond by forbidding her to leave home. Many women the BBC spoke to accused police themselves of sexual harassment. When asked about this, Muqdad Miri, spokesman for Iraq's interior ministry, acknowledged that cases involving police personnel do occur but claimed they are very few and result in harsh punishment—up to ten years in prison and dismissal. He suggested that women post on social media because it is easier than filing an official report, and because it has become a common way to draw attention to causes. Police have received about three hundred reports of sexual violence since the beginning of the year, Miri said, but he acknowledged that the real number is far higher because many cases never reach authorities due to social customs and traditions.

The picture that emerges from these accounts is of a struggle not only against sexual violence itself but against deeply entrenched mentalities and social beliefs that allow it to persist. Edwar, who has been advocating for women's causes for over fifty years, offers a gloomy assessment: twenty-three years after Saddam Hussein's regime fell, it seems Iraq is moving backward on women's rights. Yet both she and Jassim say they refuse to stop. "If all of us are going to get scared, no-one will change anything," Jassim says. The activists continue to push for stricter laws that explicitly criminalize harassment and gender-based violence, for protection, and for a system built to deter abusers rather than silence survivors.