On 2 March 2026, the killing of Yanar Mohammed, President of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), was announced following a targeted shooting outside her home in Baghdad. According to sources close to her work, she had recently returned to Iraq to resume her activities in a country she refused to abandon as an open field. The nature of the targeting points directly to her work as a woman human rights defender.
HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement expresses its unequivocal condemnation of this assassination and its full solidarity with her colleagues at the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and with the feminist movement across the region. Yanar Mohammed was not merely a public figure — she built, on the ground, protection networks and life-saving services. Since 2003, she established a network of safe houses across five Iraqi cities, providing protection to a large number of women fleeing femicide, trafficking, and domestic violence, in the absence of adequate legal recognition to protect those shelters or guarantee their continuity. She supported campaigns to reform the Penal Code, including demands to repeal Article 409, which provided a mitigating defence in certain killings committed under the pretext of “honour”, and resisted legislative processes that threatened to lower the age of marriage and expand guardianship over the rights of women and girls. She faced threats and judicial harassment directly linked to her human rights work. Each time, she continued.
This crime cannot be understood outside the context that produced it. Armed groups operating in Iraq enjoy wide margins of impunity from accountability, which undermines the effectiveness of judicial oversight and compounds the risk of targeting women human rights defenders. According to multiple human rights and media reports, cases of assassination and threats against prominent women activists have been documented in recent years — among them the killings of Su’ad al-Ali in Basra and Tara Fares in Baghdad in 2018 — without accountability. This pattern is not a series of isolated incidents; it is the product of an environment in which violence feeds on accumulated impunity. The State’s obligation to protect, investigate, and ensure accountability does not lapse in the absence of identified perpetrators or due to their anonymity — it intensifies with each successive failure to act.
The women whom Yanar Mohammed protected were predominantly from the most vulnerable groups: poor, from marginalised communities, without legal documentation, trapped within a system of economic and social violence before any physical harm occurred. The safe houses she built were not temporary shelters — they were a practical substitute for a State absent from the lives of those most in need of its protection. This is what makes her assassination a structural blow, not merely a symbolic loss, and what places on the State an obligation of due diligence: to prevent violence, investigate it, hold perpetrators accountable, and provide reparation.
This assassination intersects with a legal and regulatory environment that expands control over women’s lives while weakening protection. In early 2025, the Iraqi Parliament passed an amendment to the Personal Status Law expanding the authority of religious institutions over marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance, undermining gains achieved by Iraqi women since the 1959 law. In August 2025, Parliament passed the Ja’fari Personal Status Law, which entrenches discrimination across core aspects of women’s lives. At the same time, the Law on Protection from Domestic Violence has remained stalled in Parliament since 2019, while Article 41 of the Penal Code explicitly permits the “discipline” of a wife by her husband. In 2023, the Communications and Media Commission issued directives restricting the use of the term “gender” in media — a clear signal of the ideological framework targeting any work related to women’s rights. The safe houses built by Yanar Mohammed operate without adequate legal recognition, under constant threat of closure. These conditions were not merely the backdrop to what occurred — they were part of the environment that made it possible.
This intersects with a discernible regional trend of restrictions on women’s rights and civic space through legislation, judicial prosecution, and the curtailment of civil society organisations across the Middle East and North Africa. When a woman human rights defender is killed in Baghdad without accountability, the same message reaches anyone contemplating similar targeting in any other capital: the cost is zero.
“The assassination of Yanar Mohammed is not an isolated incident — it is a direct consequence of an environment in which violence against women human rights defenders is sustained by impunity and the absence of accountability. What is required of the international community is a position that conditions any cooperation with Iraq on measurable standards, including: progress in the investigation, the protection of women defenders, and a safe operating environment for women’s rights organisations.”
Mostafa Fouad — Executive Director, HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement
HuMENA calls on:
First: Iraqi Authorities
— To open an effective, independent, and transparent investigation in accordance with international standards, establishing criminal responsibility and encompassing those who ordered, funded, and carried out the killing.
— To provide immediate protection to witnesses and to staff working in shelter networks, and to guarantee that these networks are not closed down or criminalised.
— To provide legal recognition for shelter facilities and ensure their protection and funding.
— To end the use of the judiciary as an instrument to pursue women’s rights organisations.
Second: The European Union and Member States
— To raise this assassination at the highest diplomatic levels with the Iraqi authorities.
— To operationalise the EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders in the context of the relationship with Iraq through concrete measures, not declarations alone.
— To condition any support or institutional cooperation on publicly measurable indicators, including: progress in the investigation, protection of women defenders, and a safe operating environment for women’s rights organisations.
Third: United Nations Mechanisms
— To raise this case within the relevant Special Procedures mandates and to request regular public reports from the Iraqi authorities on the progress of the investigation.
— To advance genuine accountability through dedicated follow-up mechanisms for cases of political assassination in Iraq.
HuMENA continues its work on protecting civic space and supporting human rights defenders in a region where these rights are eroding with accelerating speed. We know the cost of this work — and we know who pays it. What Yanar Mohammed built — safe houses, protection networks, generations of activists — is greater than any assassination can silence. They sought to silence her. They will not silence what she built.
