LGBTQ rights in Iraq
rights of LGBT people in Iraq
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Iraq face severe challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. Openly LGBTQ individuals are subject to criminal penalties under the 2024 law making homosexual relations punishable by up to 15 years in prison with fines and deportation; the 2024 law also criminalizes and makes punishable by prison time promoting homosexuality, doctors performing gender-affirming surgery, and men "deliberately acting like women". Discrimination is also widespread. Openly gay men are not permitted to serve in the military and same-sex marriage or civil unions are illegal. LGBTQ people do not have any legal protections against discrimination and are frequently victims of vigilante justice and honor killings.
Following British occupation of Iraq, very strict sodomy laws were put in place. These laws allowed discrimination, harassment, and murders of members within the Iraqi LGBTQ community. Once Iraqi independence was achieved, these laws still remained. In recent years, leaders within Iraq have spoken out about reducing sodomy laws within the country. Regardless of the reduced laws, discrimination, harassment, and murders of LGBTQ community members still persist.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “LGBTQ rights in Iraq” as rights of LGBT people in Iraq. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as rights of LGBT people in Iraq. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q116752. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “LGBTQ rights in Iraq” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.