Iraq’s Compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: The Death Penalty
Country: Iraq
Partners: Abolition Death Penalty of Iraq Organization, The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Issues: Death Penalty, Women's Rights
Mechanism: UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women
Report Type: Shadow/Parallel Report
This report addresses the Republic of Iraq's compliance with its human rights obligations
under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,
especially regarding its use of the death penalty. This report supplements the report that
the authors submitted in January 2025 at the list of issues stage and provides relevant
updates. Iraq continues to carry out executions at a high rate, and in 2024 Iraq carried out the fourth-greatest number of executions worldwide, which represents an increase from 2023 (when
it had the sixth-highest number of executions worldwide). In 2024, Iraq executed at least
63 people-quadruple the number of executions in 2023 (16) and the greatest number of
recorded executions annually since 2019. In 2024, Iraqi courts sentenced at least 200
people to death and at year-end authorities held at least 8,000 people under sentence of
death. As of the end of 2024, the Kurdistan Region held 22 women under sentence of
death, but the overall total number of women under sentence of death remains unknown. Iraq asserts that it authorizes the death penalty only for the "most serious" crimes, but of
181 new death sentences, 40 were for broadly defined terrorism-related offenses, 122 were
for drug-related offenses, and only 19 were for murder. All of the 63 reported executions
in 2024 were for terrorism-related offenses.
Iraq is one of six countries known to have executed at least one woman in 2024, and one
of nine countries known to have sentenced women to death in 2024.
