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Reports

From a unified coalition to fragmented maps: The story of twenty years of Shi’a alliances

The Shi’a forces today are no longer what they used to be when Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed in 2003. After being once united under a single umbrella, the race for influence has divided them.

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Reports

“If safe drinking water reaches us, I will throw a party and prostrate to God in thanks”.   

The fishermen once plied the waters and returned with their catch, mooring their boats within calling distance of the houses at a place known as Al-Ankur— a tongue of land stretching deep into the lake like a miniature Cape of Good Hope. But that changed when Lake Habbaniyah began to recede.

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Reports

“What I lived through alone could become a collective fate under the Shariʿa personal status code”: How can a child know the meaning of romantic or sexual love?  

Today I feel the need to tell my story, even if my hands tremble and tears slip through. My experience was not an isolated incident, but an early glimpse of what the so-called Shariʿa personal status code could mean today—especially after it was passed on 27 August 2025 in Iraq’s parliament, just one hour after being received from the legal committee of the Shiʿa Endowment. A total of 167 MPs voted in favour.

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Reports

‘Get rid of the babies and I’ll divorce you’: On reproductive coercion in Iraq 

In Iraq, the decision to have children is not regarded as a woman’s personal choice. Many women find themselves trapped in a coercive cycle of pregnancy, abortion or infertility. These are not isolated cases, but part of a wider system of reproductive violence.

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Stories

Playing to Spacetoon and dancing with Sajida Obeid: living with Down’s syndrome in an Iraqi home 

In an Iraqi home where the sound of Spacetoon blends with the rhythms of Sajida Obeid’s songs, Fatima, who has Down’s syndrome, grew up between the warmth of protection and the sting of society’s gaze… a sixteen-year journey of rejection, love, and change.

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Reports

Street-fixers under the legislative dome: How did MPs turn from lawmakers and overseers into ‘road-patchers’?

Perhaps it is time to ask every MP: How many laws have you drafted? How many interpellations have you led? Not how many streets have you patched.
About the role of the MP, which has shifted from legislating to fixing streets.

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Reports

The deadly thirst: Iraqi Kurdistan is drying too! 

Thirst is no longer confined to southern Iraq and its salty Basra. Even the mountains of Kurdistan, once described as the country’s water reservoir, are beginning to wither. Rivers are cut off, wells run dry, and villages are silently abandoned. This is drought creeping in relentlessly.

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Stories

Two worlds, one stage: Hasan Habib on comedy, family, and the Iraqi diaspora 

For comedian Hasan Habib, stand-up is more than jokes: it is a dialogue on family, migration, and Iraqi identity, where laughter softens trauma and connects diaspora lives to their homeland.

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Reports

Iraq elections 2025: Sudani’s showdown with Kata’ib Hezbollah between US pressure and Iran’s influence 

A confrontation that began with an incident at the Agriculture Directorate soon spiralled into a test of Iraq’s balance of weapons and political influence—an arena where local rivalries intersect with regional calculations. All of this unfolded just months before the November 2025 elections through which Prime Minister Muhammad Al-Sudani seeks to secure a second term.

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Stories

‘I live for a chance to leave Iraq’: How I survived torture and slavery at the hands of Islamic State 

A decade after being freed, a Yazidi woman tells how she endured being abducted by militants at the age of nine