International Mechanism Submissions

The Committee last reviewed Iraq’s compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 2018. Among the Committee’s 2019 Concluding Observations are four recommendations relevant to this report, particularly with respect to discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, and gender. This report addresses Iraq’s compliance with its human rights obligations under the Convention with regard to the death penalty, which the Committee did not specifically address in its 2019 Concluding Observations or in the 2024 List of Themes in relation to the combined twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh periodic reports of Iraq. The number of recorded death sentences in Iraq has increased from at least 41 in 2022 to at least 139 in 2023. At least 8,421 people were known to be under sentence of death at the end of 2023. According to Amnesty International, at the end of April 2024, as many as 150 people were at imminent risk of execution after President Abdul Latif Rashid reportedly ratified their death sentences.