IRAQ

Iraq’s first NAP covered 2014-2019; Iraq’s second and current NAP covers the period 2020-2024.

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Objectives of the 2020-2024 NAP:

Iraq’s latest NAP is based on 3 pillars, each with several objectives:

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Participation:

This pillar is concerned with enhancing women's participation in leadership and decision-making in a way that enhances peacebuilding and peacekeeping. It includes ensuring the active participation of women in achieving and sustaining peace by engaging them in influential decision-making positions related to peacebuilding in the security sectors and justice systems.  It also includes ensuring women’s active participation in institutions at national and local level that are concerned with the relief, recovery and reconstruction stages.

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Protection:

This pillar is concerned with protecting women and girls affected by conflict from all forms of gender-based violence, especially sexual violence, and ending impunity of perpetrators. It includes elements such as establishing mechanisms to ensure the protection of women and girls within camps and displacement sites as well as areas to which they return post-conflict.  It requires effective reporting and intervention, accountability and justice to prevent impunity for perpetrators as well as protection for conflict-affected women and girls from sexual violence that has been employed as a weapon of war.

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Prevention:

This pillar is concerned with the prevention of women and girls from all forms of gender-based violence before, during and after the conflict. It is to be achieved by creating a safe and supportive environment for women and girls based on social cohesion, and by changing the religious and societal discourse in a more tolerant and acceptable direction.  It also includes protection of women's experience of conflict within institutional frameworks, in order to translate them into binding actions, and increase the resilience of conflict-affected women through improving livelihood opportunities and access to services, especially those conflict-affected women who are heads of households.  It also involves integrating gender into early warning systems to prevent conflict-related violence.

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Commentary:

This is Iraq’s second NAP, with the first covering the period 2014-19. The current NAP notes that the previous NAP had included several stereotypical categorisations of women and this constituted a major obstacle for the implementation of the objectives it set out. There is also note of the fact that the design of the previous plan took place in a time of relative stability for Iraq which was then followed by a phase of conflict that meant authorities moved away from NAP implementation in favour of following emergency planning. 

The latest iteration of Iraq's NAP also takes place in the context of political instability that has seen clashes between the Iraqi government and militia forces, although there has been some increase in stability more recently, since the current government took office in October 2022. 

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Civil society involvement in development of the NAP

Civil society actors are mentioned throughout the NAP and they are referenced especially in relation to committees, community organisations, and legislative consultations. Civil societies are also included in the monitoring and evaluation programmes designed to assess progress of the NAP towards its objectives. 

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UN peacekeeping statistics:

Iraq is not contributing any UN peacekeeping personnel at present. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) is currently ongoing, and is designed to provide support for the Iraqi people and Government in advancing political dialogue and national and community reconciliation.

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Women in peacekeeping:

The NAP’s dominant focus is increased participation of women in decision-making positions and peacebuilding negotiations, as well as incorporating gender into warning systems to prevent violence stemming from conflict. This extends to including women in the implementation of strategies designed to combat extremism, a problem that Iraq has consistently faced. It also  notes the importance of accounting for gender in military operations, and increasing the number of women in senior investigative, law enforcement, and judicial roles. 

There is extensive mention of sexual violence and its prominence under ISIS control, and this is addressed alongside measures to combat sexual violence committed by military and security forces. Compared to the earlier edition of the NAP, women are seen to have more agency in this second NAP, but there is still significant room for greater inclusion of women in all of the three pillars of UN Resolution 1325 upon which this NAP is based.

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References and sources:

Iraq National Action Plan (Unofficial translation into English):  Iraq-NAP-2-2020-2024_arabic_ENG-translation-Google-Translate.pdf (wpsnaps.org)

United Nations Peacekeeping (Sept 2023) https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/troop-and-police-contributors 

Contribution of Uniformed Personnel to UN by Country, Mission, and Personnel Type (Sept 2023): 05-Missions Detailed By Country

United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq https://iraq.un.org/en/132447-united-nations-assistance-mission-iraq-unami