Yanar Mohammed and Iraq’s Struggle for Gender Equality and Accountability (opens in new tab)

On 2 March 2026, Iraqi feminist and human rights defender Yanar Mohammed was shot and killed outside her home in Baghdad by unidentified gunmen. Her assassination came just one day before so-called Iraqi Women’s Day. While this day is meant to celebrate women’s rights, it instead underscored how precarious those rights remain. For the blog, Taif Alkhudary and Hayder Al-Shakeri remember Yanar