Briefing note from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
24 May 2016 Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Rupert Colville Location: Geneva Iraq We urge the Iraqi Government to immediately conduct an independent, transparent and effective investigation into the use of force by security forces against protestors outside the Green Zone in Baghdad last Friday. Four protestors were killed and up […]
No Way To Get Funding: Iraqi Kurdistan’s Law on NGOs Must Change, NGOs Say
By Abdul-Khaleq Dosky – published by Niqash Non-governmental organisations in Iraqi Kurdistan are lobbying for a change in the regional law relating to their work. They say the decades-old law is preventing them from doing their job. 12.05.2016 | Dohuk Iraqi schoolchildren with donated books and pens. (photo: Staff Sgt. Alex Licea) According to legal experts in the […]
The Protest in Iraq: a National, Popular and Nonviolent Movement
Baghdad, May 2016 Report on a seminar hosted by the Information Center for Research and Development, in the headquarters of the Iraqi Council for Peace and Solidarity, Baghdad. On Saturday, the 7th of May 2016, in Baghdad the Information Center for Research and Development organized with the Iraqi Council for Peace and Solidarity a seminar […]
Protests in Baghdad’s Green Zone Turn Deadly!
ICSSI Baghdad – May 22, 2016 The Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative [ICSSI] has received devastating news from our partners on the violent repression of last Friday’s demonstrations in Baghdad. Among them, the Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq denounces that Iraqi Security forces have attacked members of the ‘Huna Baghdad’ Satellite Channel who were […]
Shahrazad Services Center for Women Human Rights Defenders, Sees the Light in Baghdad
The Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative (ICSSI) – May 2016 Women Human Rights Defenders in Iraq, including female journalists, unionists and activists work with human rights organizations, contribute with a significant role in the development of human rights in Iraq. However, at the same time they are exposed to the risks more than these exposed […]
Suspension of Ilisu Dam project demanded at Tigris River Valley symposium in Turkey
Batman, Turkey, May 2016 The ancient town of Hasankeyf in Turkey has for years been struggling against the destructive Ilisu Dam, currently under construction in Southeastern Turkey. The dam would not only flood Hasankeyf but in addition would lead to a huge decrease in water flows to Iraq, threatening the Iraqi Marshlands in its very […]
Iraq: Security Challenges Do not Give Carte Blanche to Commit Human Rights Violations
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL – PRESS RELEASE The daily security threats that plague the lives of Iraqi civilians must not open the door to more human rights violations, Amnesty International warned today at the end of a six-day trip to Baghdad and Erbil headed by the organization’s Secretary General, Salil Shetty. Both the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan […]
Young Grassroots Activism on the Rise in Iraq: Voices From Baghdad and Najaf
By Zahra Ali, 5 May 2016, published on Open Democracy. Through banners and slogans, grassroots groups find new, inclusive ways of being Iraqi in a country traumatised by authoritarianism, occupation and sectarian war. Last month, I returned to Iraq to both visit my family and present the findings of my doctoral thesis on women’s political activism […]
The Iraqi Intifada, a Weekend of Popular Nonviolent Upraising
By ICSSI, May 2, 2016. On the 1st of May 2016, Baghdad looked much safer, without separation walls between the government and the Iraqi people. Those concrete walls built to protect politicians in the Green Zone, to allow them to shut eyes and ears to the legitimate requests of the people, have been torn down […]
Popular Protests Escalate in Iraq as Installation of “White Envelope Government” Stalls
By Ismaeel Dawood and Terry Kay Rockefeller (ICSSI). Dramatic events are unfolding in Baghdad on April 30, 2016: Peacefully and in collaboration with security forces, thousands of Iraqi protestors, most of them followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, have entered the Iraqi Parliament building in the Green Zone; Protesters are calling on all to protect the public […]
The impact of a possible Mosul Dam failure
A technical report has been released by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house science service, on a possible failure of the Mosul Dam on the Tigris River in Northern Iraq. For several months, new stories have appeared in which the strength of the dam has been put into question. The largest dam of […]
Officials Threaten Journalist with Death unless he Stops Denouncing Corruption
Journalistic Freedoms Observatory An Iraqi journalist faces pressure and death threats for publishing a file of corruption on investments in the province of Diyala, where local officials and directors of municipalities have manipulated permits for investments in the cities of Baquba, and Khanaqin. According to the documents obtained by the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), the […]