Since 2018, we have been providing various forms of legal assistance to vulnerable people in Iraq. In five years, we have provided tens of thousands of IDPs and refugees with access to justice and the necessary documentation to guarantee their rights.
Iraq continues to grapple with mass displacements caused by the war against ISIL. Four years of conflict and extremely violent fighting in the city of Mosul, which ended with the victory of the Iraqi army, resulted in nearly 6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country. Even after the war ended in 2017, many were unable to return to their homes, either because they were destroyed or because of social tensions.
To date, around 5 million IDPs have returned to their areas of origin, but over 1.2 million Iraqis are still displaced, mostly in the governorates of Ninewa, Duhok and Erbil. Although the vast majority of the displaced live in private houses in urban areas, around 160,000 people still reside in the 23 camps located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KR-I) and East Mosul, camps that on the instructions of the Iraqi Council of Ministers should be permanently closed by the end of July 2024.
In addition to this complex displacement situation, Iraq hosts around 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers, more than 90% of whom live in the KR-I. There are over 260,000 Syrians, mainly Kurds, as well as refugees and asylum seekers from Iran, Turkey, Palestine and other countries.
In areas of displacement and in areas that have seen the recent return of millions of Iraqis, displaced and returnees families struggle to find opportunities for integration and livelihoods and face daily constraints related to lack of documentation. In Iraq, difficulties in accessing civil documentation affect both the displaced and formerly displaced population and have potentially very serious consequences.
Our legal support activities
In order to ensure that the rights of the most vulnerable people are respected, INTERSOS in Iraq has been offering legal assistance to IDPs since 2018 and from 2019 also to the refugee population in the country.
In the governorates of Erbil, Ninewa, Saladin and Sulaymaniyah we offer legal consultation services and legal assistance to IDPs, refugees, returnees and vulnerable Iraqis. In particular, we assist people in obtaining legal documents such as marriage, birth, death and divorce certificates and offer support to the displaced population in obtaining identity documents, nationality certificates and the documentation needed to access public services and public food assistance. From 2018 to 2023, we provided legal advice and assistance to 72,737 IDPs and 26,006 refugees and asylum seekers and succeeded in obtaining identity documents and civil papers to 37,781 IDPs and 897 refugees and asylum seekers.
A pillar of our legal activities is representation in court: to ensure that the most vulnerable population has access to due process, we provide legal representation in civil and criminal proceedings to refugees and asylum seekers and represent internally displaced persons and members of host communities in proceedings to obtain civil documents. In addition, we represent victims of gender-based violence in court in custody, alimony, custody and divorce proceedings including those residing in Erbil women’s shelters. Between 2018 and 2023, we represented 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers in court.
Another important part of our work is providing legal assistance and representation to detained refugees and asylum seekers: from 2018 to 2023, we provided legal assistance to 481 detained refugees and asylum seekers. Alongside this work, we also do advocacy work to support refugees and asylum seekers detained in federal Iraq. Although travel between Iraqi Kurdistan and federal Iraq is prohibited for refugees and asylum seekers, it is not uncommon for people to still move around the territory in search of employment opportunities or to access services not available in their areas of residence, risking arrest and possible deportation. To support these people, our legal team advocates with legal actors operating in federal Iraq so that they can take on cases we are aware of, and we also establish a dialogue with the Residence Directorates to stop any deportation proceedings. From 2018 to 2023, we have prevented the deportation of 104 people.
Alongside advocacy activities to stop deportations, we actively intervene in support of political asylum seekers to stop extradition requests activated through Interpol by their countries of origin. Between 2018 and 2023, we averted 9 extraditions.
As our activities are mainly concentrated in territories where many people have restrictions on their movement and/ or are unable to access civil affairs offices, in coordination with UNHCR and relevant authorities, we organise Civil Affairs Directorate’s mobile missions and courts mobile missions, preparing in advance the documentation of refugees and internally displaced persons who do not have the possibility to travel to reach the court, so that the officers can go directly to the site and conduct proceedings in the displacement areas. Through the same process, we also support the missions of officers of the Ministry of Interior’s Permanent Committee responsible for issuing legal documents for persons granted refugee status, which is based in Baghdad. Between 2018 and 2023, we facilitated 54 of these missions.
The last key elements of our legal support activities are awareness-raising and information. We structure our outreach sessions based on trends intercepted by our staff among the support requests we receive. The topics that recur most frequently are: the procedures and documentation required to obtain a civil identity document, national laws and regulations on issues such as fraud, child marriage, gender-based violence and, more generally, on procedural rules in criminal and civil cases.
We implement these activities thanks to the support of UNHCR, ECHO, AICS and OCHA.
Data from 2018 to 2023:
98.743
IDPs, refugees and asylum seekers received legal assistance and counseling
38.678
IDPs, refugees and asylum seekers obtained civil documents
3.000
Refugees and asylum seekers represented in court
481
Detained refugees and asylum seekers received legal assistance
104
Deportations prevented
9
Extractions avoided
54
CAD and PCMI missions supported