Iraq's new Ja'afari Personal Status Code, passed by parliament on August 27, discriminates against women by favoring men in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and children's guardianship and care, Human Rights Watch said today.
Religious authorities drafted the code following an amendment to Iraq's Personal Status Law passed in February 2025. The amendment allows couples concluding a marriage contract to choose whether the Personal Status Law of 1959 or the Personal Status Code (mudawana), developed by the Shia Ja'afari school of Islamic jurisprudence, would govern their marriage, divorce, children's guardianship and care, and inheritance.
"The new Personal Status Code further institutionalizes discrimination against women, legally relegating them to second class citizens," Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch said. "It takes away women's and girls' agency over their lives and instead gives it to men. It should be repealed immediately."
The code includes multiple provisions that roll back hard-won women's rights. For example, the code:
- Allows a husband to convert his marriage contract to be governed by the code instead of the Personal Status Law without the consent or knowledge of his wife.
- Allows a husband to divorce his wife without informing her or obtaining her consent.
- Automatically transfers responsibility and care of children to the father after age 7, regardless of the best interests of the child.
- Allows a wife to stipulate in the marriage contract no polygamy or divorce without her consent, but if the husband breaches these obligations the marriage/divorce remains valid, "even if he is a sinner according to Islamic law."
When the amendment to the Personal Status Law was first introduced to parliament in August 2024, it was met with broad public opposition and outrage from women's rights groups. As a result of their tireless campaigning, some of the most harmful provisions of the original amendment were scrapped, including one that would reduce the minimum age of marriage for girls to 9.
Now, women's rights groups continue to protest the law and push for its annulment.
"As women's organizations, we are against the code in its entirety and we call on parliament to cancel this law," Nadia Mahmood, co-founder of AMAN Women's Alliance, told Human Rights Watch. "This code reflects the Islamic parties' views [on] women's rights and [their] place in the family and society. The code makes it clear that they don't view women as equal to men but rather [as accessories] to men, in charge of filling all [their] desires."
"The problems the Ja'afari Personal Status Code has created are not only women's issues but Iraqi issues. If it isn't repealed, it will breed social problems that will manifest for years and generations to come," Sanbar said.
The Case of Ghazal H.
On September 11, 2025, a decade after her divorce, Ghazal H. received a court summons notifying her that her ex-husband had filed a lawsuit to retroactively apply the Ja'afari Personal Status Code to their marriage contract and to terminate her guardianship of their 10-year-old son. She said he had done so without her knowledge or consent.
"It is unacceptable that someone marries under a law that protects the rights of women and children, and then, more than a decade later, manipulates the law to strip those rights away," Ghazal told Human Rights Watch.
Ghazal said that her husband became violent soon after their marriage, and his beatings led to the miscarriage of her first pregnancy. In 2015, soon after Ghazal gave birth to their first child, she discovered he was cheating on her, and the violence intensified.
"He began threatening to divorce me unless I reduced my deferred mahr (gift from the groom to the bride) from 100 million Iraqi dinars (US$76,000) to 10 million Iraqi dinars ($7,600)," Ghazal said. "At first, I refused, but eventually I agreed to reduce it to 50 million Iraqi dinars ($38,100) because I wanted to preserve my family and protect my newborn son."
"On August 16, 2015, after a dispute about his affair, [my ex-husband] brutally assaulted me, striking me with the butt of his pistol on my head and across my body," Ghazal told Human Rights Watch. "I sustained severe bruises and injuries, including a broken rib, a skull fracture that affected my ear nerve, and multiple wounds."
After this incident, Ghazal filed a domestic violence complaint against her husband. The case was referred to the minor offenses court, which found him guilty of intentional assault and sentenced him to four months' imprisonment.
While the Iraqi Constitution expressly prohibits "all forms of violence and abuse in the family," only the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has a law on domestic violence. A draft anti-domestic violence law has been stalled in Iraqi parliament since 2019. Instead, article 41(1) of Iraq's penal code gives a husband legal authority to "punish" his wife, and parents the authority to discipline their children "within limits prescribed by law or custom." The penal code provides for mitigated sentences for violent acts, including murder, for "honorable motives" or for catching one's wife or female relative in the act of adultery or sex outside of marriage.
In December 2015, a court in Baghdad granted Ghazal's divorce but reduced her deferred mahr from 50 million Iraqi dinars ($38,100) to 25 million Iraqi dinars ($19,500) with the justification that Ghazal had "caused her husband harm" by filing a domestic violence case against him.
Ghazal said that since she received the notification of the conversion of their marriage contract to the Ja'afari Personal Status Code in September, she lives with the constant fear that her son will be taken from her.
"How can a father, convicted in a criminal case of domestic violence, be granted the right to take custody of a child away from the mother who has sacrificed everything for him?" Ghazal said. "The new law opened a loophole that allows him to exploit the system, even though our marriage was contracted under Law No. 188."
