Gay Travel Advisory

Iraq

Law against Prostitution and Sexual Deviance (2024)

Sources
  1. Passed by the Iraqi Parliament, 27 April 2024; amends/renames the Law against Prostitution (Law No. 8, 1988). Full enacted text not yet available to ILGA World as of report cutoff.
  2. Article 404

Legal Code Text

Criminalises 'homosexual relations' (defined to include repeated same-sex sexual conduct) with up to 15 years' imprisonment, and 'promotion of homosexuality' with a minimum 7 years. An earlier bill draft (2023) proposed the death penalty and defined broad 'acts of effeminacy' offences; the death-penalty provision was dropped prior to final passage.

ILGA Analysis & Notes

Codifies into explicit statute what had previously been de facto criminalisation via other legislation. Passed after a contested legislative process: the bill was withdrawn from the agenda by the Speaker in Jan. 2024, then reinstated by the Federal Supreme Court (Case No. 254/Federal/2023) in response to a legal challenge, before passing on 27 April 2024.

Sources
  1. Text of the law is available at: www.refworld.org/docid/452524304.html .
  2. In November 2014, the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission (ILGHRC) launched two important reports on the situations of LGBT people in Iraq, “When Coming Out Is A Death Sentence” and “We’re Here: Iraqi LGBT People’s Accounts of Violence and Rights Abuses”, both of which are available at: http://iglhrc.org/content/exposing-persection-lgbt-individuals-iraq
  3. See: http://nusr.net/1/index.php/ar/nthm/nthm-oqoobat/319-nthm-oqoobat-6 ; and ILGHRC timeline on killings in the region, at: http://iglhrc.org/dontturnaway/timeline .

Iraq's Penal Code (Law No. 111, 1969) did not explicitly criminalise consensual same-sex acts, though such acts were treated as de facto illegal via other statutes. On 27 April 2024 the Iraqi Parliament passed the Law against Prostitution and Sexual Deviance (2024), which imposes up to 15 years' imprisonment for consensual same-sex relations and a minimum of 7 years for 'promoting homosexuality.' An earlier draft (2023) included the death penalty; this was dropped from the final text. (ILGA World had not obtained the final text as of report cutoff, given the law's late-April passage.)