3 hot-button bills on Iraqi parliament’s Monday agenda

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s parliament is preparing for an eventful session on Monday with three major items on the agenda - a vote on a bill that would return land confiscated under the Baath regime to the original Kurdish and Turkmen owners, the second reading of amendments of the controversial personal status law, and a second reading of the general amnesty bill that would change the definition of affiliation with terror groups.

Voting on the Kirkuk land restitution bill was supposed to be held earlier this month, however, it was excluded from the agenda for the September 4 session, prompting Kurdish parties to boycott the parliament meeting.

“The Kurdish factions objected. We will not participate in the parliamentary assembly until the draft law is added to the agenda and put to a vote,” Jamal Kochar, a member of the Iraqi parliament from the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), told Rudaw at the time.

The bill has gone through its first and second readings but has not been put to a vote.

“The Sunnis are primarily against the bill, the Shiites also support the Sunnis,” Soran Omar, MP from the Kurdistan Justice Group bloc, told Rudaw on Saturday.

He said that a committee has been formed in the parliament in order to reach an agreement and get it to a vote.

Multi-ethnic regions known as the disputed areas, particularly the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, have long been a point of contention between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi government. In the 1970s, Kurdish and Turkmen lands were seized by the Baath regime under the pretext they were located in prohibited oil zones and the land was given to Arabs who were resettled into the area.

Following the fall of the Baath regime in 2003, Iraq began a policy of de-Arabization under Article 140 of the constitution, aiming to reverse the demographic changes imposed by former dictator Saddam Hussein.

In July 2023, the Council of Ministers unanimously approved a draft law revoking all Baath-era rulings that had confiscated agricultural lands from Kurds and Turkmen in Kirkuk. However, restoring the land to its original owners requires the passage of an additional law.

On Monday, the legislature will also have a second reading of two controversial articles amending the personal status bill, which has caused uproar within women and civil rights groups as they would effectively legalize child marriage.

If passed, the proposed amendment would allow Iraqis the choice to follow religious rules to govern matters in their marriage. For Shiites, the bill specifies following the provisions of the Jaafari school of jurisprudence, which permits marriage for girls as young as nine and boys at fifteen.

The parliament is also scheduled to hold the second reading of a bill to amend the definition of affiliation with terrorist organizations in the 2016 General Amnesty Law.

This amendment was a primary demand of Sunnis when they agreed to join the ruling State Administration Coalition with the Shiite Coordination Framework and Kurdish parties to form the government.

Sunnis argue that thousands from their community have been unjustly imprisoned in Shiite-dominated Iraq since 2003 due to alleged links to terrorist groups.

The bill was proposed by the parliament’s legal, security, defense, and human rights committees.