Raad al-Maliki, an independent MP, introduced a bill in August to amend the Law on Combating Prostitution, which dates back to 1988. He sought to attach the terms “homosexuality” or “effeminacy” to articles within the law and impose penalties of life imprisonment or death for same-sex relations.
His proposals were approved, though with reduced sentences.
The first amendment declared that the law will be renamed the “Law on Combating Prostitution and Homosexuality.”
Anyone who engages in consensual homosexual relations shall be imprisoned for a period no less than 10 years and no longer than 15 years, according to another of the amendments.
Promoting homosexuality “in any way” will also be punishable by no less than seven years in jail and a fine of 10 to 15 million dinars. The activities of any organization promoting prostitution or homosexuality in Iraq are also prohibited.
A prison term of one to three years will be imposed on anyone charged with practicing or promoting effeminacy, in addition to a fine of five to 10 million dinars.
Any individual who undergoes a sex-reassignment surgery, as well as the doctor or surgeon conducting the operation, will face one to three years in jail. The bill excludes cases of medical intervention to “treat birth defects to affirm the sex of the individual” following a court order.
“With this vote, we have ended the stage of homosexuality to where there is no return, and we have curbed the mouths of those who advocate for it and those who support its spread, and thus preserved our values and the principles of our society derived from the right religion,” MP Murtadha al-Saadi said in a press conference following the session.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) last August called on the Iraqi government to withdraw the proposed text, saying the bill would violate “fundamental human rights.”
“The Iraqi government has failed to tackle discriminatory practices that underpin violence against LGBT people… Instead it has promoted anti-LGBT ‘morality’-based legislation that fuels violence and discrimination against already marginalized sexual and gender minorities,” Rasha Younes, senior LGBT rights researcher at HRW, said at the time.
The LGBTQI+ community in Iraq is often subjected to discrimination and persecution by security forces and the country’s conservative-majority population. Community members face the threat of arrest, verbal abuse, sexual assault, and even murder.
The community is often perceived as homogenous in Iraq with all non-cisgender individuals viewed as “homosexuals.” Any law criminalizing homosexuality threatens all members of the queer community.
HRW has on multiple occasions called on Iraqi and Kurdish authorities to take measures to end violations against members of the LGBTQI+ community, adding to the calls from rights groups that have gone unanswered over the years.
A crackdown on LGBTQI+ people in Iraq in 2009 saw deaths that probably number "in the hundreds," according to a 2022 HRW report.
The queer community faces persecution in the Kurdistan Region as well. In April 2021, security forces in Sulaimani arrested a group of suspected LGBTQI+ individuals in Sarchinar, under the pretext of cracking down on prostitution. The arrests caused uproar from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region’s queer community and civil society activists.
Most laws passed in the Iraqi parliament do not automatically come into force in the Kurdistan Region and need to be approved in the regional parliament first.
