Implement the Child Protection Policy in Iraq, and adopt a child labor policy in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region for other worst forms of child labor present in Iraq, including forced begging and commercial sexual exploitation.
Implement programs to ensure that children are discouraged from enlisting in armed groups and receiving military training. Ensure that universal access to education is consistent with international standards, including for refugee and internally displaced children, and that programs address barriers to education, including the lack of teachers, the destruction and lack of local schools, costs of transportation and school supplies, lack of infrastructure, especially during school closures.
Implement programs to address child labor in relevant sectors in Iraq, such as the provision of services to children in commercial sexual exploitation, to demobilize and reintegrate children engaged in armed groups, and to provide informal education programs and shelters for human trafficking victims. Lucia St. Prevalence and Sectoral Distribution of Child Labor. Table 1. Table 2. Legal Framework for Child Labor. Iraq has ratified all key international conventions concerning child labor Table 3.
Table 3. Table 4. Enforcement of Laws on Child Labor. Table 5. Table 6. Criminal Law Enforcement In , criminal law enforcement agencies in Iraq took actions to combat child labor Table 7. Table 7. Coordination of Government Efforts on Child Labor.
Table 8. Government Policies on Child Labor. Table 9. Key Policies Related to Child Labor Policy Related Entity Description Child Protection Policy — Iraq Outlines a comprehensive approach to addressing child protection, including addressing child labor, through prevention, protection, and rehabilitation programs such as a poverty alleviation initiative, and educational and mental health services.
Social Programs to Address Child Labor. Table Suggested Government Actions to Eliminate Child Labor Area Related Entity Suggested Action Year s Suggested Legal Framework Ensure that the laws comprehensively prohibit child trafficking in all parts of Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region, and do not require force or coercion for their application, in accordance with international standards.
Pasha-Robinson, Lucy. July 24, Embassy- Baghdad. January 5, Department of State. Trafficking in Persons Report- Iraq. Washington, DC, June 16, April 3, Accessed March Analysis received March Terre des Hommes.
Because we struggle to survive: Child labour among refugees of the Syrian conflict. August 28, January 17, Falah, Ahmed. Displaced Children in Iraq face child labor and exploitation. Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, Source on file. Childhoods Cut Short. June 10, February 18, January 9, January 13, Khoder, Salam. Child labour a growing problem in war-torn Iraq. Al Jazeera, August 22, As corruption goes rampant, Iraq children eat from garbage.
July 31, Hartleib, Elisabeth. Child Labor in Iraq. Deutsche Welle, June 12, Coronavirus: Iraq's 'Covid generation' faces forced labour, lack of school. August 22, January 24, Nazeh, Maher and Saif Hameed.
Child labor doubles in Iraq as violence, displacement hit incomes. Reuters, July 10, What I would most like is to leave this job and go back to school. Donors talk big on Iraq reconstruction, but Mosul residents go it alone. Iraqi children scavenge for a living. Al Jazeera, March 29, Sea of death: World's biggest cemetery filling up as Iraq's battle against Isis takes its toll.
International Business Times, August 23, Iraq Faces Worrisome Drug Problem. The Arab Weekly, September 11, Radio Farda. France 24 is not responsible for the content of external websites. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility early Tuesday for a suicide bombing that ripped through a busy market in the Iraqi capital ahead of Eid holiday celebrations, killing nearly 30 people, according to medical sources.
In a message posted to its Telegram channel, the militant group said a suicide bomber named Abu Hamza al-Iraqi detonated his explosive belt in the middle of a crowd in Sadr City, an eastern Baghdad suburb on Monday night, killing more than 30 and wounding 35 others.
In one of the worst attacks in Baghdad in recent years, body parts of victims lay scattered across the previously bustling market that had been crowded with shoppers buying food ahead of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, according to an AFP photographer.
Iraqi President Barham Salih called the bombing in the densely populated majority-Shiite suburb of Sadr City a "heinous crime" and offered his condolences. Eight women and seven children were among the dead, according to a medical source, who said the toll lay between 28 and 30 killed. Video footage shared on social media after the blast showed bloodied victims and people screaming in terror. The blast was so strong it ripped the roofs off some market stalls. Refrigerators full of water bottles were drenched with blood, and shoes were strewn on the ground alongside fruit, AFP journalists said.
Baghdad Operations Command, a joint military and interior ministry security body, said it had launched an investigation into the blast, and police and forensic teams late Monday were searching through the smoking wreckage for clues. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi convened an emergency meeting with his heads of military and security agencies.
In part, their enthusiasm stems from necessity. The new relationship comes amid a rare international consensus that the calm in Iraq must be consolidated, lest the country regress into violent conflict.
Yet if the government and its partners cannot produce a tangible peace dividend, secure liberated areas, and end a cycle of sectarian and ethnic retribution, those gains could easily be reversed. Western partners have already started walking back their financial commitments, hoping their Gulf allies will fill the gap. Iraq provides an opportunity for Saudi officials to apply lessons learned from less successful interventions in Syria and Yemen. In Iraq, Saudi Arabia can play to its strengths, building political support and influence through economic incentives, while avoiding direct or proxy military action.
Saudi political and economic re-entry can capitalise on and reinforce domestic trends in Iraq, namely growing anti-Iran sentiment and an appetite for balanced regional relations. Counter-intuitively, the fact that Riyadh is starting from a low base could be a blessing in disguise.
Both sides must do the hard work of rebuilding trust, creating a network of contacts and courting public opinion.
Riyadh will need strategic patience in order to build the influence it seeks. Yet Iraqis want and need to prevent their country from becoming yet another theatre for Saudi-Iranian hostilities.
Calibrating the speed of engagement also will be a challenge. But if Riyadh tries to do too much, too soon, it could become mired in bureaucracy and corruption — or even provoke an Iranian reaction. Both Saudi Arabia and Iraq will need to break old habits, such as working exclusively via political patronage and allowing inflammatory sectarian rhetoric from clerics and media commentators.
If the risks of engagement are great, the folly of not engaging would be greater still. As Saudi policymakers readily admit, leaving post Iraq without strong Arab partners kept the country dependent on Iranian security assistance, energy support, trade and political funding, and made its security institutions vulnerable to Iranian penetration.
Seeking to undo the damage, Saudi Arabia can now help strengthen the Iraqi state so that Baghdad can play the role to which many Iraqis say it aspires: a bridge between warring neighbours, rather than a battleground. The following steps could help:. While Riyadh gave tacit approval of the U. Hide Footnote Believing that by invading Iraq the U. Hide Footnote. The George W. Bush administration pushed Saudi Arabia to re-establish ties with Iraq and discouraged the kingdom from supporting non-state groups.
Real progress came only after Islamic State ISIS took vast swathes of Iraqi territory in and a new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, showed firm commitment to rolling back the group.
Engagement has intensified since, with visits by Abadi to Riyadh in June and October and at least three such trips by the Iraqi interior minister, Qasem al-Araji. Hide Footnote Saudi attempts to bolster certain political and armed opposition groups in Syria largely failed, while Iran gained ground.
A Saudi diplomat said:. When you play with someone who has no red lines, you will always lose. Crisis Group interview, Riyadh, January They set about formulating a new, more assertive approach, the implementation of which appears to have accelerated since MbS was elevated to crown prince in June Crisis Group discussion, May Saudi leaders undertook the strategic equivalent of triage: they decided which theatres could still be saved from Iranian domination and focused on those. Officials in the Trump administration were undertaking a similar assessment.
Hide Footnote In this context, a new U. Saudi officials viewed Iranian policy in the region as rooted in exploiting and exacerbating instability through sectarian divisions. Riyadh conceptualised its engagement with Iraq as a demonstration that Saudi Arabia seeks the opposite: to strengthen the state around patriotic ideals of Iraqi-ness.
A senior Saudi policymaker described it this way:. Saudi Arabia in response pursues a strategy of reason. We try to strengthen these states and encourage patriotism among their citizens. Hide Footnote An Iraqi academic explained:. The Iranians treat [the region] as a game of chess. The Saudis are rash actors. The Iranians never [make rash decisions]. There is one Iranian vision. Iran has had the same goal since to protect themselves.
They never trust the Arabs and never trust the U. As it tries to regain a foothold in Iraq, Riyadh hopes to push back against Iranian influence, though policymakers say they realise it will not fully succeed in doing so. From minimal influence today, they ambitiously say, they would like to see the balance tilt to 70 per cent Saudi sway, 30 per cent Iranian.
Hide Footnote To achieve this aim, the kingdom is pursuing four tactical avenues: outreach to mainly Shiite political elites, strengthening of economic ties, cross-confessional religious engagement and spread of social good-will. Hide Footnote The most pivotal relationship is with Abadi.
Since his election in , U. Hide Footnote Ultimately, it was Abadi who personally convinced the Saudi leadership that he would not bow to Iran. Abadi has worked assiduously to prove himself independent of Tehran, including in security policy, an area the Gulf views as being wholly compromised by Iran. According to Western sources, the PMUs had expected to have equal control over political decision-making, but Abadi insisted that he should have the last word on policy.
Amid mismatched expectations, the coalition split within 24 hours. Renad Mansour and Faleh A. The Maliki government seized the opportunity to expand pre-existing Shiite militias. Some brigades are aligned with — and many were trained and equipped by — Iran; others have committed atrocities against Sunnis. Hide Footnote Though the PMUs are a diverse force, and not all units are allied with Tehran, policymakers in each of these Gulf states have described them as an Iranian front and their entrenchment as a roadblock in the way of closer ties.
Hide Footnote Abadi has said he aims to reduce the number of PMU fighters while bringing their heavy weapons under state control. Crisis Group interviews, Gulf officials, February and April ; Bahraini government spokesperson, email correspondence, March ; former Iraqi diplomat, phone, February Hide Footnote Several officials stressed the importance of Abadi maintaining the premiership after the 12 May elections and said their engagement was predicated on the assumption that he will.
Gulf countries solicited a banner-headline dollar figure, offering Abadi pre-election evidence that he and perhaps only he can unlock Gulf funding for reconstruction. Araji is a member of the Badr Organisation, one of the primary vehicles for Iranian influence in the security sector.
Hide Footnote Iraqi officials and diplomats have varying views of why Saudi Arabia has prioritised ties with Araji. Some believe it is expediency.
Hide Footnote The Interior Ministry would also be in a unique position to offer Saudi Arabia reassurances that its interests and investments will not be targeted by Iranian-allied PMUs. Crisis Group interview, phone, April By switching to Saudi patronage, he might be able to subvert this hierarchy and improve his chances at moving up politically. Hide Footnote Regardless of the calculations, the relationship appears mutually coveted.
Araji visited Saudi Arabia at least three times in the second half of and met MbS on at least one occasion. Beyond outreach to Iraqi Shiite government officials, Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states, as well as Turkey, have extended support to individual politicians and parties, including some of the top vote-winning coalitions among non-Shiite-led blocs in the May elections. Qatar supports some Iraqi political figures, including by hosting exiles and providing coverage in Qatari-owned and aligned media outlets.
These actions contribute to the splintering of Sunni Arab political alliances. Hide Footnote These overtures have included direct patronage, favourable media coverage and diplomatic visibility.
As part of its re-evaluation of Iraq, Riyadh is betting on the idea that the vast majority of Iraqi Shiites place their ethnic identity above their confessional one. Velayat-e faqih imagines a theocratic Islamic republic ultimately governed by the marja in accordance with Islamic law. Khamenei has strongly promoted Qom rather than Najaf as the pre-eminent place of Shiite religious learning. Crisis Group interview, May Saudi engagement with Iraq accelerated after a July visit to the kingdom, and subsequently to Abu Dhabi, by Shiite cleric and politician Moqtada al-Sadr, whose coalition won a plurality of parliamentary seats in the May elections.
Hide Footnote He told Saudi leaders he wanted Iraq to have more balanced regional relationships, including with the Gulf states, as well as with Turkey and Iran. Sadr also asked Riyadh to open a consulate in Najaf to facilitate both pilgrimage to Najaf by Shiites from Saudi Arabia and travel to Mecca and Medina for the hajj and umra by Iraqi Shiites. Hide Footnote Hakim, an Arab nationalist, a former leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq from which he split and a loose political ally of Abadi and Sadr, hails like Sadr from a prominent clerical family in Najaf.
Hide Footnote Saudi Arabia also appears to be experimenting with allowing some of its Sunni clerical establishment to speak informally with Shiite scholars in Najaf.
As it embarks on a massive economic and social reform initiative, the leadership in Riyadh has publicly described the most austere reading of Islam among those clergy as an obstacle to its ability to govern a modern state. Interviewed in Time , 5 April While the kingdom has engaged in inter-religious dialogue before, including through the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, past Saudi leaders have largely avoided participating directly, leaving that task to the clerics.
Hide Footnote But in contrast to some Tehran-allied Shiite clerics, Sistani has insisted on non-violence, even amid the Arab uprisings. For this reason, the Bahraini leadership, which violently quashed its protests with Saudi support, views Sistani as a critical counterweight to Iran, which cheered on the demonstrations.
How it uses this tool could make or break the relationship. Crisis Group interview, Baghdad, March Economic engagement is the one area where Saudi Arabia believes it could have an advantage over Iran. Its consumer products are of higher quality, its firms have stronger infrastructure and investment expertise, and its wallet is thicker. Consumer goods are a particular preoccupation for Riyadh.
The vast majority of agricultural and other staples in Iraq come from Turkey and Iran, providing both countries with quotidian visibility as well as foreign revenue. Hide Footnote Saudi Arabia would like to replace these products with its own; in August , it opened its Arar border crossing with Iraq to facilitate trade, and it is reportedly considering opening another transit point.
Saudi Arabian businesses were encouraged by their reception at the October Baghdad International Fair that they would be able to reach Iraqi consumers.
By both Saudi and Iraqi accounts, the Saudi booth saw significantly more visitors than the Iranian display. The kingdom additionally appears interested in cross-border road development, petrochemicals, agriculture and infrastructure. Hide Footnote For now, however, few concrete projects or investment details have emerged. Crisis Group interviews, Gulf official, April ; Western oil sector consultant, phone, February Hide Footnote In addition to these concerns, a lack of skilled labour and a lengthy contract review process are deterring investors in the oil sector.
Crisis Group interview, phone, February Hide Footnote Riyadh has a preference for personal over institutional relationships, but to bypass the ministries would run the risk of exacerbating and even instigating corruption among office holders.
Pledges at the Kuwait conference offered another route: credit and export guarantees meant to provide the Gulf private sector with insurance for riskier investments. An Emirati official explained:. I see this as a new approach to foreign aid, to link it to institutions such as the Abu Dhabi Fund that have their very specific criteria. What it does is to fix the cash problem of corruption. With the Abu Dhabi Fund, the [Iraqi] government provides us with projects, [the Fund] does a technical assessment, and instead of just giving cash, which could disappear, we build relationships with local institutions.
The electricity sector is an example. Hide Footnote But today, when the grid in southern Iraq reaches capacity, Iran has readily filled the gap to meet demand. While the Gulf states may be able to disburse funds as fast, their success in displacing Iranian products may well depend on what financial terms they set in comparison. If Saudi Arabia is intent on entering the Iraqi market quickly, it will almost certainly fuel corruption. But if Riyadh is indeed concerned about graft, it may be unable to compete for contracts and bids when other parties offer kickbacks to Iraqi partners.
Saudi Arabia faces a complex challenge to rewrite the narrative of its past engagement with Iraq. In early , a number of buses in Baghdad carried posters criticising MbS for having inflicted civilian casualties in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. The kingdom is attempting to repair its image through media engagement, tribal and personal outreach, and direct patronage of Iraqi tribes, communities and individuals.
Hide Footnote Semi-governmental organisations in Saudi Arabia and Iraq are also exploring joint cultural festivals, parliamentary exchanges and educational links. Hide Footnote Days later, King Salman called Abadi and promised to build a new soccer stadium in a yet-to-be-determined location in Iraq. Hide Footnote More than years old, this place of worship was a defining landmark before ISIS blew up its minaret during its rule. Such gestures could help soften Iraqi antipathy for the kingdom and its Gulf allies, though their impact will depend on timely follow-through, and more importantly on the broader political and economic context in which they take place.
Hide Footnote This reservation illuminates a fundamental mismatch between Iraqi and Saudi motivations for reopening relations. Many Saudis are happy to rebuild ties with Arab cousins — sometimes literally cousins — in Iraq. Members live on both sides of the border between the two countries, as well as in Syria and Jordan; they comprise both Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
Few in Iraq want to see their country devolve into another Saudi-Iranian battleground. Instead, policymakers now speak of an alternative, if highly aspirational, paradigm. Proponents of this approach cite the example of Iranian and U. Crisis Group interview, senior official at government-backed, non-profit Iraq reconstruction organisation, Tehran, March Through public and private investment, they say, Saudi Arabia could develop infrastructure, revitalise the housing sector, inject new capital into the oil industry and, ultimately, create jobs.
The various perspectives can be roughly divided into five: the federal government, Shiite Iraqi nationalists, the Najaf religious establishment, the Sunni political class and Iran. Iraqi institutions have oscillated between ambition and pragmatism in their engagement with Saudi Arabia since late The new bilateral ties have been applauded amid triumphant optics: promises of reconstruction aid and cultural good-will.
The Iraqi government needs Riyadh to deliver quick economic benefits to justify reopening ties and to acquire breathing room for dealing with thornier issues.
Specifically, if ties are to last, current and former Iraqi officials say they need to be institutionalised rather than depend entirely on high-level personal contacts. Hide Footnote This process will be time-consuming and likely fraught with disagreement. The U. Inevitably, Saudi Arabia and Iraq will disagree on major technical issues concerning reconstruction and on broader aspects of their relationship. Immediately after the Kuwait conference, Gulf officials described a host of obstacles to seeing their pledges materialise.
Hide Footnote They would like to see stronger guarantees, for example to ensure repayment in case investments default, as well as visible attempts to curb corruption. Proposed in late , the plan was still under consideration in Baghdad as of April The plan would include mechanisms to convene ministerial-level Iraq-GCC meetings to address disagreements before they escalate or erupt in the media. The May election results may encourage Gulf investors, however.
Prior to the election, Sadrists said their aim was to build an anti-corruption majority bloc in parliament to begin pushing through structural change.
Iraq cannot wait to rebuild until it has eradicated graft from its contracting system. In order to get projects off the ground, Baghdad will need creative solutions of the sort Riyadh and its allies are already considering. Hide Footnote Put simply, to succeed, the bilateral ties will need to both move big and visibly on the economy while working small and tediously day-to-day. Hide Footnote But with either or both of those blocs in opposition, the Saudi-Iraqi relationship could become a bargaining chip in parliamentary politics.
Members of Fatah and State of Law are politically close to Tehran, and while still nominally supportive of Saudi investment, their members have been significantly cooler to the prospect of closer ties with Riyadh.
Hide Footnote Analysts close to Maliki expect that his list can resist Saudi engagement in alliance with Fatah. Crisis Group interview, Iraqi journalist close to Maliki, phone and email correspondence, March Shiite leaders who favour re-engagement and call themselves nationalists view part of their role as demonstrating to Riyadh that their constituents favour their Arab, national and even tribal identities over their sectarian affiliation.
Hide Footnote With this understanding, some urge Saudi Arabia to embrace not only Iraqi Shiites but also Shiism generally as a legitimate school of Islam. Pro-engagement Shiite politicians would also like to see a more nuanced policy toward the PMUs, which Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain see as an Iranian front and a threat to their own security.
Bahrain also has domestic concerns. Many of them are still in Iraq. Crisis Group correspondence, March Conflict Armament Research reported in March that it had found forensic links between Iranian components of explosively formed projectiles and improvised explosive devices used in Yemen, Bahrain and Iraq. Hide Footnote Many Iraqis are offended by criticism of these forces, which took some of the heaviest casualties fighting ISIS and not all of which are close to Iran.
But the Hashd were our last resort. We would consider any entity that talks about them negatively an enemy.
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