Women and children believed to have links to the “Islamic State” (IS) militant group suffer “harrowing” sexual exploitation and discrimination in Iraq’s refugee camps, Amnesty International said on Tuesday. More than 2 million were displaced from their homes after “IS” militants swept through Iraq in 2014. What did Amnesty find? Women were being coerced and pressured into entering sexual relationships in exchange for cash, humanitarian aid and protection from other men. The women also faced the risk of rape, with…

Iraq will not solve the crises it faces unless it maintains an inclusive political process, overcomes sectarian divisions and rids itself of foreign interference, the Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi told The National during a visit to Dubai. On the 12th of May Iraqis will cast their votes in the first parliamentary elections since the country's victory over ISIL. However, the state is still being hindered by issues that are debilitating its democratic process and political independence. Mr Allawi explained that foreign intrusions in Iraq are…

Iraq’s Vice President Ayad Allawi launched an electoral campaign focusing on countering corruption, dubbing it “the call of the homeland.”“Some of those who assumed responsibility after 2003 did not carry the project of building a state,” Allawi said in a televised speech on Sunday evening.Allawi, one of the three Vice-Presidents of the Republic, added that “some took advantage of their influence and international relations to overrun real voices of the people expressed in the 2010 elections.”He pointed out that “abhorrent…

Iraq’s crude oil reserves may turn out to be much higher than believed, the country’s oil minister Jabar al-Luaibi said at a recent industry event, timing the statement with news that it will pay foreign companies less in new contracts. Last year, Iraq updated the estimate for its proven reserves to 153 billion barrels from 143 billion barrels, but if Luaibi is right, the figure could actually be double the 2017 estimate. If the higher estimate proves true, it would make Iraq…

Iraq has sentenced 3,130 prisoners to death for alleged links to ISIS and other militant organizations since 2013, as the nation’s criminal justice system struggles to deal with thousands of prisoners from its four-year fight against extremist groups. Iraq has detained or imprisoned at least 19,000 people accused of terror-related offenses, according to an Associated Press analysis of a 27,849-person spreadsheet of all those imprisoned in Iraq as of late January. The spreadsheet was provided by an Iraqi official on the condition…

In 2014, 40 Indian construction workers went missing outside the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The city had fallen to the Islamic State militant group just days before. Relatives said they received panicked calls from some of the workers, begging for help. Then, for years, nothing. The Indian government urged relatives not to lose hope. But this week, Indian officials confirmed that the bodies of 39 of those workers were found in a mass grave near Mosul. Thirty-eight of them have been…

A protest was held in front of the Iranian consulate in Karbala on Wednesday following the arrest of a prominent Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Sayyid al-Shirazi, by order of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The dozens of protesters, including some Shiite clerics, chanted the slogan ‘death to the Vilayat-e-Faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic Jurist)’ and called for Shirazi’s immediate release while holding Iraq responsible for allowing Iran to arrest the Iraqi cleric. According to Farsi media outlets, excessive violence was…

An official Iranian statistics affirmed, for the first time, that 2,100 soldiers from the Iranian forces were killed in Syria and Iraq during seven years of Iranian military intervention.Iran didn’t publish earlier any official statistics about the material and human costs of its forces' intervention, but it announced on Tuesday that 2,100 trees were planted equal to the number of those killed in battles in Syria and Iraq.This took place within events held on the occasion of Iran's National Tree…

(Beirut) – Kurdistan Regional Government security forces detained participants in December 2017 protests around Sulaymaniyah and forced them to sign statements promising not to criticize the government, Human Rights Watch said today. The detained protesters were held for up to eight days without being taken before a judge and were forced, before being released, to sign commitments not to protest or be critical of the government on social media. The KRG’s Asayish forces also detained three journalists who were covering protests, apparently…

Thousands of Iraqi teachers yesterday threatened to launch an open-ended protest in 15 provinces “if the government does not improve our [teachers] living conditions”. Demonstrating outside the Ministry of Finance in the capital Baghdad, teachers from about 14 provinces called on the central government and the ministry to pay outstanding salaries as well as improve their living conditions. The protesters also demanded government deductions to their salaries be halted. Kamel Abdul Karim Murad, a teacher from the southern city of…