Prostitution in Iraq is illegal. Punishment can be severe, including life imprisonment. During the era of slavery in Ottoman Iraq , prostitution was connected to slavery. The Islamic Law formally prohibited prostitution. However, since the principle of concubinage in Islam in Islamic Law allowed a man to have intercourse with his female slave, prostitution was practiced by a pimp selling his female slave on the slave market to a client, who was allowed to have intercourse with her as her new owner, and who after intercourse returned his ownership of her to her pimp on the pretext of discontent, which was a legal and accepted method for prostitution for centuries in the Islamic world.
Many women fleeing the war in Iraq have been forced into prostitution. Some sources claim up to fifty thousand Iraqi refugee women in Syria , many of them widows or orphans, have been forced into prostitution. The Kurdistan region has reportedly received "women and children trafficked from the rest of Iraq for prostitution ". Soran Mama Hama , a young reporter for Livin Magazine wrote an article entitled "Prostitutes invade Kirkuk", which was published on 15 June Hama was shot and killed in front of his home in Kirkuk on 21 July.
In some cases, Iraqi teenage boys and young men are the prostitutes. In these cases the prostitutes are typically motivated by poverty and are mostly heterosexual. Iraq is a source and destination country for women and children subjected to sex trafficking. The violent conflict with ISIS exacerbated the population's vulnerability to trafficking, in particular women and children. Refugees and IDPs face heightened risk of trafficking due to their economic and social vulnerability and lack of security and protections.
NGOs report trafficking networks in the Kurdistan Region target refugees and IDPs, operating with assistance from local officials, including judges, officials from the Asayish forces, and border agents.
In , members of the Kurdistan Region Parliament and NGOs reported some personnel from the Asayish forces facilitated the sex trafficking of women and girls in Syrian refugee camps in the Kurdistan Region, primarily in Domiz refugee camp, as well as sex trafficking of girls outside of the camps. In , NGOs reported Asayish guards not only allowed men to enter a camp to solicit commercial sex with refugee girls, but the guards also solicited sex from the refugee girls, including granting them permission to leave the camp in exchange for sex.
