Nearly eight years after the official fall of the Islamic State in Iraq, the situation for Christians remains alarming, marked by insecurity and discrimination. Iraq ranks 17th among the countries where Christian communities are most persecuted,[1] despite their ancestral presence. The ECLJ is working to draw the attention of the United Nations to these persecutions. We have conveyed to the UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues the concerns and needs expressed by local NGOs and Church leaders. This Special Rapporteur will conduct an official visit to Iraq from June 15 to 23, 2025.
A Disappearing Minority
At the beginning of the 2000s, there were still 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Today, only 140,000 remain,[2] divided between federal Iraq and the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Mostly Assyrian or Chaldean, but also Syriac and Armenian, both Catholic and Orthodox, these Christians now make up less than 1% of the Iraqi population. They are the largest religious minority in the country, alongside the Yazidis, Mandaeans, Shabaks, and Kakais. The majority of the population is Muslim—64% Shia and 34% Sunni,[3] but the Christian communities, converted by Saint Thomas as early as the first century, are the direct heirs of the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia. Their presence, predating the Arab conquest, has continued uninterrupted since the early first millennium.
The Islamic State’s takeover of Mosul on June 10, 2014, triggered a mass exodus of Christians toward the Nineveh Plains, Kurdistan, or abroad. “As soon as they seized the city, jihadists’ voices echoed from mosque loudspeakers and megaphones to mock Christians, announcing that they must choose: conversion, exile, or submission under dhimmi status. Most fled with only their cars and what they wore,” recounts Monsignor Najeeb, Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul.[4]
Over ten years later, barely twenty Christian families have returned to this city now burdened with painful memories. The Iraqi government has shown little investment in reconstruction, and only thanks to NGOs have some churches been renovated and now ring their bells again. Additionally, Christian-owned lands, shops, and workshops have been taken over by new owners, complicating the return of displaced persons, for whom no public policy exists. This uprooting is only the first step toward exodus.
Persistent Discrimination and Growing Anxiety
The near-systematic departure of Christians to the United States, Sweden, or Germany is driven by a socio-cultural Islamic environment hostile to them. Whether in education, job seeking, or access to public services, Christians face discrimination in every aspect of daily life. Numerous NGOs (SOS Chrétiens d’Orient, Christian Aid Program Northern Iraq, The Return, Hammurabi Human Rights Organization) working on the ground attest to this. Not belonging to the dominant ethnic groups or main political parties, Christians face greater difficulty obtaining jobs—particularly in public administration—and securing their rights to safety and political representation. “Today we are not equal,” laments Yohanna Yousif of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization.[5] “If you're not in a party, you won’t find a job. They have all the rights; we have none.” Roland, a project manager, shares his experience: “I applied online to be a teacher and received a positive response by email. But when the list of accepted candidates was published, my name had been removed because I’m a Christian. Similarly, in class, when a Christian student is top of the class, teachers give them lower grades so that a Muslim student can take the first place”.[6]
Although Daesh is no longer a direct threat, security remains precarious for Iraqis—especially for more vulnerable religious minorities. In federal Iraq, Shiite militias continue to harass and assault civilians. In Kurdistan, civilians are caught in ongoing clashes between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Christian villages in this region are frequently bombed, forcing families to flee. In Miska, a border district in Duhok, the Assyrian church was destroyed, and 11 families were displaced. The community’s insecurity, the trauma of the jihadist invasion, and the feeling of being second-class citizens without protection keep Christians in a state of chronic anxiety about the future.
Dilan Adamat, from the NGO The Return, sadly notes that fear is pushing Christians to leave their ancestral lands: “Here, you always have to fight, and people are tired. There is deep exhaustion from all these security, legal, and social pressures”[7].
A Systematic Population Replacement
Christians are not only leaving in pursuit of a better future. They are being pushed out by various political and military actors who view this minority as an obstacle to their strategic goals. This is particularly true of the Shiite militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces (Hachd al-Chaabi), which number between 140,000 and 238,000 fighters.[8] Supported by Iran, they form a powerful, largely uncontrolled faction within the Iraqi army, with growing political and military influence. In the Nineveh Plains, these militias are gradually taking over territory, checkpoints, and establishing Shiite settlements in traditionally Christian areas.
The Hammurabi Organization denounces this and proposes countermeasures: “We are witnessing a real demographic shift—they are distributing land to Shiites in Christian areas. We demand the creation of protected districts where land would be reserved for Christians!” Harassed and intimidated, Christians are often pressured into selling their land to the highest bidder. In Bartella, just twenty kilometers from Mosul, Christians now make up only a quarter of the population, whereas they were the majority in 2014. This plays into Iran’s project of establishing a Shiite crescent, in which Christians are merely obstacles to be moved aside.
Land issues are also present in the north, in the Kurdistan region, where authorities and locals have traditionally been more welcoming to Christians. In this clan-based society, a few powerful armed families dominate institutions. They expropriate Christians from their unused lands, even forging documents to justify these seizures. The confiscation of Christian properties by influential Kurdish figures or tribal chiefs is now one of the primary issues faced by Christians in the region. Prior to 2021, 223 families filed complaints in Erbil seeking restitution of their lands, but only around forty won their cases[9]. These land grabs, along with the difficulty of finding employment, are causing what Monsignor Najeeb calls a “true hemorrhage”: “We’re living almost like refugees in our own country.” He explains that Christians face a double persecution: “Like all Iraqis, due to the weak state and militia violence, and as a religious minority.” He also condemns a “heritage genocide,” as no institution recognizes the urgency of preserving the millennia-old Assyro-Chaldean cultural heritage.
Read here the ECLJ contribution to the UNSR.
[1] Iraq – Country Profile 2024, Open Doors France, https://www.portesouvertes.fr/persecution-des-chretiens/profils-pays/irak
[2] Shlama Foundation. “Population of Assyrians in Irak.” Shlama.org, 2025. https://www.shlama.org/population
[3] Humanists International, Freedom of Thought Report, 2024, https://fot.humanists.international/countries/asia-western-asia/Irak /
[4] Interview of the ECLJ with Archbishop Najeeb, May 8, 2025.
[5] Interview of the ECLJ with the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, May 20, 2025.
[6] Interview with Roland (name has been changed), May 13, 2025.
[7] Interview of the ECLJ with Dilan Adamat from the NGO The Return, May 12, 2025.
[8] Mohammad Salami, EISMEA, “Analysis of the Impact of Militias in Iraq: Strategies to Mitigate Their Influence,” February 21, 2024, https://eismena.com/article/analyse-de-limpact-des-milices-en-irak-strategies-pour-attenuer-leur-influence-2024-02-21
[9] Kurdish Gov’t missing in action – Hectares of Christian land swallowed up by trespassers, KirkukNow, 24 mai 2021, https://kirkuknow.com/en/news/65618.
