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Juveniles in Iraq’s Prison Systems

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Juveniles in Iraq’s Prison Systems

When considering the treatment of juveniles in Iraq’s justice system, it is necessary to distinguish between the official aspirations of the Iraqi state and its actual practice. Whether under the Baathist regime or the elected Iraqi governments that have followed – and under the pressures of civil war and insurgency – the state has often failed to meet the high standards it has formally endorsed.

Legal Framework

Article 106 of the Iraqi Civil Code states that a person is a minor until the age of 18.

Iraq acceded to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1994.[1] Three articles of the Convention are directly relevant to the treatment of minors in the justice system.

Article 19 states, “Governments must do all they can to ensure that children are protected from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and bad treatment by their parents or anyone else who looks after them.”

Article 37 specifically covers inhumane treatment and detention. It reads, “Children must not be tortured, sentenced to the death penalty or suffer other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment. Children should be arrested, detained or imprisoned only as a last resort and for the shortest time possible. They must be treated with respect and care, and be able to keep in contact with their family. Children must not be put in prison with adults.”

Article 40, on juvenile justice, reads “A child accused or guilty of breaking the law must be treated with dignity and respect. They have the right to legal assistance and a fair trial that takes account of their age. Governments must set a minimum age for children to be tried in a criminal court and manage a justice system that enables children who have been in conflict with the law to reintegrate into society.”

Under the new Iraqi Constitution of 2005, however, in case of a contradiction between the Convention and national legislation, Iraqi law has precedence.[2] In any case, Iraqi law does recognize children’s rights within the justice system. The most important piece of legislation in this respect is the Juvenile Welfare Law (JWL) of 1983. This describes the rights of children. For example, it sets the age of legal responsibility at nine years – an improvement on the earlier Penal Code (1969), which had set the age of legal responsibility at seven. It also provides that no child below the age of 14 is to be held in prison, and that those aged 14 and above are to be held only if accused of a felony carrying the death penalty. Children who are detained should be tried by juvenile courts and held in institutions specifically designed for juveniles.

The ISIS Prisons Museum asked Iraqi human rights activist Hogir Jettu to explain the discrepancy between the age of criminal responsibility (nine years) and the age at which a juvenile may be imprisoned (14 years). Jettu, who is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Public Aid Organization, stresses that there is no contradiction, but only “confusion between ‘detention’ and ‘‘imprisonment.’”[3] He points out that, “It cannot be said that juveniles under the age of 14 should not be imprisoned. The law allows the arrest of a juvenile if he commits a felony or misdemeanor, regardless of his age. However, if the child is under 14 years old, he is held under the title of ‘detention’ and not ‘imprisonment.’ This means that he is placed in a juvenile rehabilitation center.”

Article 10 of the JWL allows for the following types of detention facilities, distinguished according to the age of the juvenile and the purpose of the institution.

  • House of observation. This is a place where the suspected offender is held following their arrest and a decision of the Juvenile Court. During their detention, the suspect is to be examined physically and mentally in preparation for trial.
  • Reformatory school. Following a decision of the Juvenile Court, the offender is transferred from the house of observation to a reformatory school. The purpose of this institution is to rehabilitate the offender, and to provide them with education.

In practice, there are three dedicated reformatories located in Baghdad. The Shalshiye girls’ facility houses girls and young women from nine to 22 years old. The Rashad facility, in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, houses boys from nine to 15 years old. It has capacity for 100 detainees, but in early June 2019 actually held 145.[4] And the Tobchi facility houses boys from 15 to 18 years old. It was built in 2012 with capacity for 200 prisoners, but in late May 2019 it actually held 443.

In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) there are three more reformatories: in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Duhok.

This shows an insufficient but nevertheless functioning system that clearly distinguishes between adults and children, and that recognizes the duty to rehabilitate and educate children in state custody. However, children have often been detained at locations other than these official juvenile detention centers. Like adult Iraqis, they have often suffered from arbitrary or unjust arrest, illegal detention, and torture in prison.

Throughout Iraq’s recent history, the demands of power and the stresses of war have repeatedly led to violations of human rights and Iraqi law.

The Baathist Dictatorship

From 1968 to 2003, Iraq was ruled by the Arab Socialist Baath Party. From 1979 onwards, the Baathist regime was synonymous with President Saddam Hussein.

During this period, Iraq’s judicial system was manipulated to serve the security interests of the dictatorship. State security forces were notorious for their human rights abuses, and Iraqi prisons were sites of arbitrary detention and systematic torture. Juveniles were often subjected to similar mistreatment as adults. This was particularly the case when the regime sought to repress “disloyal” communities, as it did during the Anfal campaign against the Kurds.[5] Similarly, after the 1991 uprising in the mainly Shia south of the country, the regime rounded up men and boys without regard to their age.[6]

On the other hand, in criminal – rather than political – cases, the justice system aimed to detain minors separately from adults. Children under 18 years of age were usually sent to juvenile detention centers rather than to adult prisons. Nevertheless, abuses were common and rehabilitation services were insufficient, if they existed at all.

This system of juvenile detention and abuse is corroborated by the witness testimonies collected by the ISIS Prisons Museum (IPM). The IPM has interviewed several individuals who were juvenile prisoners during the Saddam Hussein era. Saad Salim Abdullah, for example, was arrested for smuggling rice when he was 14. The year was 2001, during the collapse of the sanctions-burdened Iraqi economy, and many people, old and young, turned to illicit means to make ends meet. Saad spent seven months in Mosul’s Ahdath juvenile detention facility.

In his testimony, Saad describes how 250 boys would spend the entire day in a large group cell, except for 30 minutes of yard time. Nutritious food was served, but otherwise the environment was oppressive. Saad remembers ‘disciplinary’ beatings by Baath Party members and uniformed security officers who worked at the facility. On one occasion, he was tied up and whipped on his feet (falaqa) as a punishment for fighting. In general, the children were not treated “with respect and care,” as the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires. Saad reported that two guards in particular terrified the boys so much that they were afraid even to whisper in their presence.[7]

Sami Abdul Khalil was detained in the same juvenile facility at the age of 17. He had handed himself in to a police station after a fight with state security agents. There, he was flogged with a plastic hose. Five days later, he was transferred to the Ahdath juvenile detention facility, where he spent about a month, pending trial. He wasn’t tortured there, but others were. Sami reports that those called for interrogation would return three or four hours later, bearing obvious signs of torture. This terrified him, as did the case of one boy who was detained in the prison until he reached adulthood. At that point, he was sentenced to death.[8]

The Anglo-American Occupation

One reason used by the United States and the United Kingdom to justify their invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was the dismal human rights record of the Saddam Hussein regime. However, by the end of the occupation, the two occupying powers had not only failed to establish detention practices that adhered to basic standards of human rights, but had been seen to have failed by Iraqi and international audiences.

The 24-year rule of Saddam Hussein ended on April 9, 2003, when American troops arrived in central Baghdad. By July of that year, Amnesty International had already documented several cases of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees at the hands of US forces. But the worst abuses would be perpetrated at Abu Ghraib Prison. Once notorious as a Baathist prison, Abu Ghraib was reopened by the Americans in August 2003. In late April 2004, “trophy” photographs of American soldiers torturing and humiliating naked prisoners caused a scandal when they were exposed to the American and international public. In the end, only a small number of mostly low-ranking military personnel were prosecuted.

In a March 2023 report titled “20 Years Since the US-Led Coalition Invaded Iraq, Impunity Reigns Supreme,” Amnesty International summarized the “rampant” violations perpetrated by US forces between 2003 and 2011, including “indiscriminate attacks that killed and injured civilians, secret detention, secret detainee transfers, enforced disappearance, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”[9]

British troops in Basra and other provinces in the south also engaged in the torture and ill-treatment of detainees. The abuses included hooding, beating, and sleep deprivation. In September 2003, Baha Dawoud Salem al-Maliki (also known as Baha Mousa), a 26-year-old hotel worker, died in the custody of British troops. A post-mortem examination determined that he had died of asphyxiation, and noted 93 injuries on his body. Three and a half years later, seven soldiers were court-martialed in connection with his death.[10]

The abuses of the occupation forces were not only inflicted upon adult detainees. US officials admitted that juveniles were also held at Abu Ghraib, and Brigadier General Janis Karpinsky said that a child as young as eight years old was among them.[11]

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), as of May 12, 2008, US forces held at least 513 children as “imperative threats to security,” and had transferred an unknown number of others to Iraqi custody.[12] US forces had detained at least 2,400 children since 2003. Most were held at Camp Cropper in Baghdad; significant numbers were also held at Camp Bucca near Basra. US officials told HRW that child detainees were separated from adults, but that very young or vulnerable children were not separated from older children. The children were permitted only very limited contact with their families, and were not provided with lawyers – though they were assigned a military ‘advocate’ at their six-month detention review. The average length of detention for these children was over 130 days. Some had been detained for over a year without trial.

Most of these children were arrested during American efforts to suppress insurgencies, and could be considered child soldiers. The Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, the international treaty banning child soldiers, which the US ratified in 2002, requires states to help with the rehabilitation of such children. However, Clarisa Bencomo, the Middle East children’s researcher at HRW, said that although “the US has been a leader in helping child soldiers re-enter society [in conflicts in which it was not directly involved], that kind of leadership is unfortunately missing in Iraq.”

In August 2007, the United States opened an educational service at Camp Cropper called Dar al-Hikmah (House of Wisdom). This was supposed to offer education to 600 child detainees ranging in age from 11 to 17. However, US military officials told HRW in May 2008 that only “200 to 300” of the 513 child detainees had been enrolled in classes.[13]

The Iraqi Government

The Coalition Provisional Authority formally handed power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June 2004. A new Iraqi government was elected in December 2005. Since then, elected governments have ruled a divided country through very difficult circumstances. Early tensions caused by occupation, insurgency, and competition over the political transition developed – especially after the February 2006 attack on the Askari shrine in Samarra – into full-blown sectarian civil war. During this period, distinctions between state security forces and irregular sectarian militias were blurred, making accountability more difficult.

The civil war eventually calmed, but social and political tensions continued. From late 2012, a protest movement based primarily in the Sunni-majority areas of the country called for the government to stop abusing detainees, to release the innocent, and to review legislation that, it was claimed, targeted the Sunni community disproportionately. This included the 2005 Anti-Terrorism Law and the 2008 Accountability and Justice Law relating to Iraq’s “de-Baathification” process. No compromise was reached between the protestors and the government. Indeed, the protests were usually met by state violence. ISIS exploited this context to take over Sunni-majority areas of Iraq in 2014.

These conditions on the ground did not promote respect for human rights, for adults or for children. Short-term emergency measures taken in response to security crises worked against the rights of detainees. In particular, the “secret informant” system, invented during the era of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (2006–2014), opened the way to abuses. This offered financial rewards in return for security information given anonymously. Tens of thousands of people were imprisoned based on these anonymous – and therefore unproven – reports. The Iraqi cabinet finally ended the practice in 2013.[14]

An Amnesty International report of that year called on the Iraqi government to take action to address problems still plaguing the justice system a decade after the fall of the dictatorship. These included detention without trial, torture and other ill-treatment, unfair trials, and excessive use of the death penalty. The report criticized in particular the “confession culture,” whereby courts would accept confessions as evidence, even if the confessions were later repudiated by defendants. In many cases, those accused claimed they had been forced to confess while being tortured.[15]

The IPM has interviewed several former juvenile prisoners from the period of Nouri al-Maliki’s government. These include Juma Salah Qader, who was arrested in 2008 for his part in a fight. He was 12 years old at the time.

 

Juma was sentenced to two years and four months’ imprisonment. He spent seven months of his term in the Ahdath (or Juvenile) Prison in Mosul, and was then transferred to the Badush Prison.

 

Juma recounts that the large hall in which he was held at the Ahdath Prison housed 70 prisoners, both men and boys. They were charged with offenses ranging from theft, through murder, to terrorism.

According to Juma’s testimony, children were punished by beatings on the soles of their feet as well as by solitary confinement. Juma himself was once kept in a solitary confinement cell for 15 days. The conditions of detention were also generally very poor. Inadequate health care, a lack of hygiene, and a humid environment resulted in cases of scabies and eczema among the young detainees.

 

Juma reports that he was unaware of visits to the Ahdath Prison by any party concerned with children’s rights.

The poor human rights standards in the Iraqi justice system led to abuses against young and old. With regard to the treatment of juveniles in particular, international criticism has focused on the following areas.

Arbitrary Detention

Arbitrary detention was already common in Iraq before the war against ISIS, and it increased afterwards. It was practiced under the pretext of fighting the terror organization and pursuing those suspected of affiliation with it, including children.

In 2017, in the context of the Iraqi state’s war with ISIS, a non-binding United Nations Presidential Statement stressed the need to pay “particular attention” to the treatment of children allegedly associated with all non-state armed groups, including those who commit acts of terrorism, “including through establishing standard operating procedures for the rapid handover of these children to relevant civilian child protection actors.”

According to interviews conducted by the Global Initiative on Justice with Children, no such standard operating procedures were disseminated to police and militias on the ground in Iraq.[16]

Detaining Girls to Pressure Male Relatives

In some cases, children were arrested not because they were suspected of any wrongdoing, but in order to pressure wanted male relatives to give themselves up. For example, HRW found that, in November 2012, federal police had “invaded 11 homes” in al-Tajji and detained 41 people, including 29 children. Twelve women and girls aged 11 to 60 were held for four days without charge at the Sixth Brigade headquarters, where they were beaten, subjected to electric shocks, and hooded with plastic bags “until they began to suffocate.”[17]

Torture and Forced Confessions

Iraq ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in July 2011. Nevertheless, torture has continued to be used, often as a means of extracting confessions. Practice in both Iraqi police stations and the bases of irregular pro-government militia is often to direct violence against both adults and children.

Courts rarely challenge confessions made in these conditions. The report of the Global Initiative on Justice with Children states, “By routinely allowing confessions allegedly extracted under torture as evidence, the judiciary helps to perpetuate the persistence of torture and ill treatment of detainees. Interviews of intelligence services demonstrate that they only seek the confessions of juveniles, with no safeguarding against coerced confession in place.”[18]

In 2015, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child described “numerous acts of torture and other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment committed against children by the police” in Iraq, and “urged the State party to investigate all allegations of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of children in a prompt and independent manner, and ensure that such acts receive an appropriate response through judicial process, in order to avoid impunity for perpetrators, and that evidence obtained through the use of torture is declared inadmissible.”[19]

The Death Penalty

Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the use of the death penalty against children. This prohibition is reinforced by Article 79 of the Iraqi Penal Code, which stipulates that, “No person between the ages of 18 and 20 at the time of committing an offense can be sentenced to death. In such a case, he will receive life imprisonment instead of the death sentence.”

However, in at least one case, this prohibition has been ignored. HRW reported that Yemeni national Saleh Moussa Ahmad al-Baidany was sentenced to death in Iraq in July 2011 after being convicted of a crime committed when he was 16 years old. Al-Baidany had been detained by US forces in 2009, and was later handed over to Iraqi custody. His father said that his son had told him he was coerced into making a confession under torture.[20]

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed its concern in regard to “instances where the lack of birth registration and difficulties in determining the age of children have resulted in death sentences for persons who were under 18 years of age at the time of the offense.” The Committee called on Iraq to “immediately remove all children from death row and ensure that the explicit prohibition of the imposition of the death penalty or life imprisonment for crimes committed by persons under 18 years of age is implemented effectively.”[21]

Conditions of Detention

Juveniles have been held in unsuitable conditions from the period of the Saddam Hussein regime, through the US occupation and post-occupation Iraqi governments, to the time of this report.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) complained of overcrowding at the Tobchi juvenile detention facility when it visited the site in October and November 2007. At the time, the facility housed almost double its capacity of 200 children. As a result, hygiene was very poor, and children were sharing beds or taking turns to sleep on the floor without mattresses.[22] As we have seen, the Global Initiative for Justice for Children found the same facility to be even more crowded in 2019, when it held 443 juvenile detainees.

A 2008 Guardian report was even more damning. It spoke of hundreds of children, some as young as nine, “sleeping in sweltering temperatures in overcrowded cells without working fans, no daily access to showers, and subject to frequent sexual abuse by guards.” A 16-year-old boy called Omar Ali, who had been detained for over three years at Karkh Juvenile Prison, alleged that the guards would take boys to a separate room in order to rape them.[23]

In 2015, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed its concerns with regard to the “particularly poor living conditions to which [juveniles] are subjected, including overcrowding, exposure to physical and sexual abuse, and insufficient access to medical services.”[24]

In 2017, a HRW delegation visited three locations at which children were detained – two in Qayyarah and one in Hammam al-Alil, both to the south of Mosul. According to prison staff, the youngest detainee was 13 years old. All three facilities were unhygienic, and so overcrowded that detainees were unable to find floor space to sleep. The delegation visited one four-by-six-meter cell that had housed 114 detainees for four months, with a single toilet between them.

At the Hammam al-Alil site, children were detained together with adults, in violation of Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. At one of the Qayyarah facilities, staff said they had recently started to detain children in a separate building from adults, but that the children were not allowed to leave their cell for exercise, education, or family visits.

Two years later, the Global Initiative on Justice with Children found that all but one of the detention facilities it had visited separated adults from children. Its investigation was not comprehensive, however. It only focused on official juvenile detention centers, and did not, for example, cover the cases of minors held at police stations.

The Global Initiative on Justice with Children reported a mixed picture. On the one hand, it said the Iraqi state was providing “the minimum required” to the juveniles in its custody, and that “all quarters are fitted with collective showers and toilets, with the penitentiary administration providing soap … Each detainee eats three times a day and meals include a traditional Iraqi menu including fresh vegetables and dairy.”

On the other hand, “the material conditions of living are sub-standard.” It warned that conditions were worsening as large numbers of detainees convicted of terrorism entered the system.

“In all children and juvenile prisons,” it reported, “all sleeping space is literally filled to the brim. The sanitation conditions are also poor, with basic hygiene.” Some centers were better than others, offering more spacious quarters, outside yards, and allowing local NGOs to provide educational support. But many children were denied daily access outside the building. Skin infections and respiratory problems were prevalent as a result.

The Global Initiative on Justice with Children also noted that none of the detention centers provided individual cells, though international standards recommend individual cells at night and interaction with others during the day. The juvenile prisoners were monitored by CCTV at all times, and so were deprived of privacy.[25]

Most recently, HRW has reported that children are held in “overcrowded, unsanitary, and in some cases inhumane conditions,” and that they are sometimes detained with adults. In addition, as of early 2023, an estimated 100 children were being held along with their mothers at the Rusafa Prison in Baghdad. Many of these women were foreign nationals charged with terrorism-related offenses.[26]

Education and Rehabilitation

HRW estimated that at the end of 2018, Iraqi and Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) authorities were holding approximately 1,500 children suspected of affiliation with ISIS. By that time, at least 185 foreign children had been convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to prison terms, according to Iraqi government authorities.[27] According to figures provided by national authorities to the STRIVE project in 2019, the figure rose to approximately 2,000 boys and girls being held as a result of their perceived ties to ISIS.

According to the Global Initiative on Justice with Children, “all children’s prisons in Iraq are offering education, with teachers deployed and paid by the Ministry of Education. Teachers teach the Iraqi curriculum, but only at primary level, except in al-Shalshiye detention facility, where the Ministry of Education is also providing for secondary level. As a result, all convicted children and juveniles who have passed primary level ‘drop-out’ of school whilst incarcerated, with obvious effects to their future.”

“All children interviewed in pre-detention told us that no social worker had ever come to visit them.”[28]

The ISIS Aftermath

Most of the worst abuses against children in Iraq’s detention system have been associated with the war against ISIS. Children from communities identified with ISIS have often been victimized. The failure to rehabilitate these communities after the defeat of ISIS may pose a danger to the future stability of Iraq and the wider region.

Some children were indeed recruited into the ranks of ISIS, occasionally as fighters but more often as messengers, look-outs, cooks, and cleaners. These children should be rehabilitated, but instead they are usually criminalized.

Then there is guilt by association. “Perhaps over 100,000” men, women, and children have been labeled “ISIS families.”[29] Sometimes this is because a male relative fought for ISIS, and sometimes simply because a family member continued to turn up for work after ISIS took over, which put them on the ISIS payroll. These people are stigmatized by their communities and often prevented from returning to their homes by Iraqi or KRG authorities. As a result, they are living in a network of camps across northern and central Iraq that are run by local and international humanitarian organizations. HRW describes the camps as “de facto prisons” because the people inside are often prohibited from leaving. Indeed, HRW received reports of guards demanding sex from women in return for permission to leave their camps temporarily, for instance, for medical treatment.[30]

The situation of children in these camps is made worse by the state’s practice of withholding important documents until people are ‘screened’ for links with ISIS. Children have often been arrested during the screening process because they share names with suspects listed by Iraqi or KRG officials. Children with very common names – “Muhammad Abdullah,” for instance, a name as common in the Muslim world as “John Smith” is in England – are particularly vulnerable to this mistaken identity.

A further problem arises from the difficulty of obtaining birth certificates for children born under ISIS rule. Children without official birth certificates are excluded from school, even in the camps.

HRW reports, “The Iraqi government has sanctioned this camp detention policy, without any publicized national reconciliation strategy or plan to remove the obstacles facing these families and facilitate their safe and dignified return home, or local integration elsewhere in Iraq.”[31]

Some efforts have been made to ameliorate the situation of children in detention in Iraq. For instance, the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have partnered with the Iraqi Ministry of Justice to set up the STRIVE project, whose full name is “STRIVE Juvenile: Preventing and Responding to Violence against Children by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups.” STRIVE made a needs assessment in June 2022, and on that basis is working to improve conditions in juvenile detention facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. Vocational training, sports and recreation areas, and family visit spaces are being provided.[32]

These efforts are important, but much more work remains to be done. The rights of children detained beyond the official juvenile facilities – in adult prisons, or in police stations, or by irregular pro-government militias – need to be protected. And the situation of children in the camps for “ISIS families” urgently needs to be addressed. These children are victims of collective punishment. The lack of opportunity they experience, the trauma they may suffer, and the resentment they may feel make them vulnerable to future radicalization. This, in turn, makes Iraq vulnerable to further cycles of violence.

The Kurdistan Region

Under the 2005 Constitution, the Kurdistan Region of the Republic of Iraq (KRI) became a semi-autonomous region with its own Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) based in Erbil. The KRG exercises many independent legislative, executive, and judicial powers.

In recent years, the KRI has experienced far less violence than the rest of Iraq. Though it was wracked by insurgency and very fierce regime repression for most of the Baathist years, the US, the UK, and France set up a “No-Fly Zone” to protect the area from the Iraqi regime after Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait in 1991. This gave the region de facto autonomy and relative stability years before it was recognized by the Iraqi Constitution. The KRI was spared the worst of the violence caused by the 2003 US invasion and then by the 2006–2008 Iraqi Civil War.

As a result, the scale and intensity of human rights abuses have been less than those in other parts of Iraq. There are also some advances in the KRI’s legal framework. The age of criminal responsibility in the KRI, for instance, is 11 years. This is still low by international standards, but is higher than the age of criminal responsibility elsewhere in Iraq, which is nine.

Nevertheless, the region faces enormous challenges, in terms of both human rights standards and the provision of humanitarian assistance. The KRI hosts hundreds of thousands of displaced people in camps or informal housing. Some of these are Iraqis displaced by civil war; many others are refugees from the war in Syria. And up to 100,000 are ‘ISIS families’ unable or unwilling to return home because of the stigma of their association – however tenuous – with the organization.

A strong desire has been expressed at official levels to improve the situation of children in the KRI’s child justice system. To that end, the KRG, supported by UNICEF, assessed the system in order to identify problems and better plan reforms. The resulting report was issued in November 2022.[33] It identifies problems in the following areas.

Arbitrary Detention

The authors of the assessment complain that “pre-trial detention is rather the first than the last resort,” but praise the way that the numbers of juveniles detained have decreased in recent years, and also that juveniles are often released on bail.

While a functioning juvenile disciplinary system exists, problems may arise before a child suspect comes across the system. Long delays between the arrest of a child and the handover of the child to juvenile police mean that children are often held alongside adults in police cells, “which may amount to illegal detention by legal actors.”[34]

The report also hints at abuses committed “off the radar,” reporting “allegations of illegal and arbitrary detention of children partially performed by individuals and armed groups who have no such competences, and partially implemented in unknown places.”[35]

Torture and Forced Confessions

According to the UNICEF assessment, “there are reports of torture being applied in practice, in particular to extract confessions.”

In previous years, HRW had made more detailed allegations. A March 2019 report was based on interviews with 29 children detained by the KRG’s Asayish security forces for links with ISIS. Aged between 14 and 18 years, 19 of the 29 said they had been tortured to make confessions, by flogging with pipes or cables, by electric shocks, or by being put in stress positions. HRW had already gathered similar accounts from 17 boys at the same detention center in 2016. Many of the children told HRW investigators that they had made false confessions only to stop the torture.[36]

Conditions of Detention

“Despite the intention for reformatories to be supportive and rehabilitative,” says the UNICEF assessment, “these structures look more like carceral institutions with limited programming and inadequate focus on reintegration. Overall, living conditions in reformatories are rather poor, and children in pre-trial detention seem to have very limited access to rehabilitation services.”

The separation of children from adults, meanwhile, “is a reality only for boys in reformatories or observation houses, but not for girls, and not for children detained in other places.”[37]

HRW reported in 2024 that, “Children held in the Reformatory for Women and Children in Erbil report better conditions [than in other parts of Iraq], including good food and separation from adult detainees. However, as of 2019, children suspected of ISIS association received no education, were confined to their rooms for up to 48 hours at a time, and were denied phone calls with their families during pretrial detention. Some also reported that reformatory guards beat them for perceived misbehavior.”[38]

In an earlier report, HRW had described claims by several boys at the same reformatory that guards took them out of sight of security cameras, and then beat them with pipes or shoes.[39]

A Better Future?

As the KRG-instigated UNICEF assessment was being written, a draft child rights law was being revised by the KRI Shura Council. The assessment describes it as “a modern, rights-based draft that promotes individual rights of the child similar to the CRC [Convention on the Rights of the Child]. It covers a much wider scope of issues than the Juvenile Welfare Law of 1983, but provides less details.” The law is still under review today.

There is reason to hope, therefore, that the child justice system will continue to improve. However, in the KRI, as in other areas of Iraq, in the words of the UNICEF assessment, when children are accused of terrorism or drugs offenses, “the child justice system seems to be widely replaced by a security system.” As the ISIS period recedes into the past, far fewer children are being arrested on terrorism charges, and many of those already in detention are either transferred to adult prisons once they reach adulthood or are released.

A more stable Iraq may yet find the resources to better serve its child detainees. It is to be hoped that the numbers of children in detention will continue to fall, and that the state’s focus on child detainees will increasingly shift from securitization to rehabilitation.

  1. A summary of the Convention is available here: www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/UNCRC_summary-1_1.pdf ↑
  2. Save the Children Sweden, “Country Profile of Iraq, A Review of the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Save the Children Child Rights Resource Center, August 2011, p. 24. https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/document/country-profile-iraq-review-implementation-un-convention-rights-child/. ↑
  3. ISIS Prisons Museum interview with Hogir Jettu, September 2024. The Public Aid Organization’s website can be found at https://pao-iq.org/. ↑
  4. Maxence Delchambre, Khaled Khalaf, and Terre des hommes Foundation, Study of the Formal and Informal Juvenile Justice System in Iraq. Baghdad. ↑
  5. The Anfal campaign (1986–1989) was a military operation launched by the Baathist regime led by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds of northern Iraq. It aimed to crush a Kurdish insurgency. The campaign resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds and the destruction of thousands of villages, and included the use of chemical weapons, most notably at Halabja. ↑
  6. An uprising broke out in the mainly Shia south of Iraq in 1991 following Iraq’s defeat in the First Gulf War. Shia Iraqis demanded political rights, but the Baathist regime suppressed them severely, killing thousands and displacing many others. ↑
  7. Witness testimonies held by the ISIS Prisons Museum. See the prisoner profiles for the Ahdath Prison. ↑
  8. Ibid. ↑
  9. Amnesty International, “20 Years Since the US-Led Coalition Invaded Iraq, Impunity Reigns Supreme.” March 20, 2023. www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/03/iraq-20-years-since-the-us-led-coalition-invaded-iraq-impunity-reigns-supreme/, accessed September 24, 2024. ↑
  10. Rachel Stevenson and Matthew Weaver, “Timeline: Baha Mousa Case.” The Guardian, May 14, 2008. www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/14/mousa.timeline, accessed September 24, 2024. ↑
  11. Al Jazeera, “US Detained Children in Abu Ghraib.” March 11, 2005. www.aljazeera.com/news/2005/3/11/us-detained-children-in-abu-ghraib, accessed September 24, 2024. ↑
  12. Human Rights Watch, “US: Respect Rights of Child Detainees in Iraq: Children in US Custody Held Without Due Process.” May 19, 2008. www.hrw.org/news/2008/05/19/us-respect-rights-child-detainees-ira, accessed September 24, 2024. ↑
  13. Ibid. ↑
  14. “Iraqi Prisons: Horrors Behind Bars.” fanack.com, July 14, 2022. https://fanack.com/iraq/human-rights-in-iraq/iraqi-prisons-horrors-behind-bars/. ↑
  15. Amnesty International, “Iraq: A Decade of Abuses.” April 9, 2013. www.amnestyusa.org/reports/iraq-a-decade-of-abuses/. ↑
  16. Maxence Delchambre, Khaled Khalaf, and Terre des hommes Foundation, Study of the Formal and Informal Juvenile Justice System in Iraq. Baghdad. ↑
  17. Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: A Broken Justice System.” January 31, 2013. www.hrw.org/news/2013/01/31/iraq-broken-justice-system. ↑
  18. Maxence Delchambre, Khaled Khalaf, and Terre des hommes Foundation, Study of the Formal and Informal Juvenile Justice System in Iraq. Baghdad. ↑
  19. Ibid. ↑
  20. Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Halt Execution of Iraqi Juvenile.” December 9, 2012. www.hrw.org/news/2012/12/09/iraq-halt-execution-yemeni-juvenile. ↑
  21. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, “Concluding Observations,” CRC/C/IRQ/CO/2-4, March 2, 2015, p. 21. http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/TreatyBodyExternal/Countries.aspx?CountryCode=IRQ&Lang=EN, accessed September 14, 2024. ↑
  22. Human Rights Watch, “US: Respect Rights of Child Detainees in Iraq: Children in US Custody Held Without Due Process.” May 19, 2008. www.hrw.org/news/2008/05/19/us-respect-rights-child-detainees-iraq. ↑
  23. Jonathan Steele, “Inmates Tell of Sexual Abuse and Beatings in Iraq’s Overcrowded Juvenile Prisons System.” The Guardian, September 8, 2008. www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/08/iraq.humanrights. ↑
  24. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, “Concluding Observations,” CRC/C/IRQ/CO/2-4, March 2, 2015. http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/TreatyBodyExternal/Countries.aspx?CountryCode=IRQ&Lang=EN. ↑
  25. Maxence Delchambre, Khaled Khalaf, and Terre des hommes Foundation, Study of the Formal and Informal Juvenile Justice System in Iraq. Baghdad. ↑
  26. Human Rights Watch submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child 98th Pre-Sessional Working Group, March 27, 2024. ↑
  27. Human Rights Watch, “‘Everyone Must Confess’: Abuses against Children Suspected of ISIS Affiliation in Iraq.” March 6, 2019. www.hrw.org/report/2019/03/06/everyone-must-confess/abuses-against-children-suspected-isis-affiliation-iraq. ↑
  28. Maxence Delchambre, Khaled Khalaf, and Terre des hommes Foundation, Study of the Formal and Informal Juvenile Justice System in Iraq. Baghdad. ↑
  29. Belkis Wille, “Iraq’s So-Called ‘ISIS Families’: Rounded up, Vilified, Forgotten.” Human Rights Watch, November 14, 2018. www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/14/iraqs-so-called-isis-families-rounded-vilified-forgotten. ↑
  30. Ibid. ↑
  31. Ibid. ↑
  32. STRIVE Juvenile, “Supporting Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Juveniles Associated with Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups through the Rehabilitation of Youth Detention Facilities in Iraq.” UN Office on Drugs and Crime, May 2023. www.unodc.org/unodc/en/justice-and-prison-reform/strive/strive-juvenile-iraq_joint-pr_june-2023.html. ↑
  33. UNICEF, “Mapping and Assessment of the Child Justice System in Kurdistan Region of Iraq.” UNICEF Iraq, November 2022. www.unicef.org/iraq/reports/mapping-and-assessment-child-justice-system-kurdistan-region-iraq-november-2022. ↑
  34. Ibid. ↑
  35. Ibid. ↑
  36. Human Rights Watch, “‘Everyone Must Confess’: Abuses against Children Suspected of ISIS Affiliation in Iraq.” March 6, 2019. www.hrw.org/report/2019/03/06/everyone-must-confess/abuses-against-children-suspected-isis-affiliation-iraq. ↑
  37. UNICEF, “Mapping and Assessment of the Child Justice System in Kurdistan Region of Iraq.” UNICEF Iraq, November 2022. www.unicef.org/iraq/reports/mapping-and-assessment-child-justice-system-kurdistan-region-iraq-november-2022. ↑
  38. Human Rights Watch submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child 98th Pre-Sessional Working Group, March 27, 2024. ↑
  39. Human Rights Watch, “‘Everyone Must Confess’: Abuses against Children Suspected of ISIS Affiliation in Iraq.” March 6, 2019. www.hrw.org/report/2019/03/06/everyone-must-confess/abuses-against-children-suspected-isis-affiliation-iraq. ↑