On June 18, Christian Solidarity International participated in a meeting of the European Parliament’s Intergroup for Christians in the Middle East.
The meeting was focused on the situation for Christians in Iraq. CSI’s director for public advocacy, Joel Veldkamp, briefed members of the European Parliament, alongside Pascale Warda, the former Iraqi minister for refugees and migration, and the founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization (HHRO).
CSI has been working with the HHRO to help Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities in Iraq since 2007.
In his presentation, Veldkamp explained that Christians have lived in Iraq for nearly 2,000 years. Despite suffering occasional persecution by Iraq’s various governments, including the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, by 2003 Iraq was still home to one of the largest Christian populations in the Middle East. But the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed a wave of violence against Christians. More than two-thirds of Iraqi Christians fled the country in the next ten years to escape church bombings, shootings, kidnappings, and other abuses carried out by Shi’ite militia groups and the Sunni jihadists of al Qaeda in Iraq – who would eventually turn into the Islamic State (ISIS).
Today, ISIS no longer controls territory in Iraq. But Christians in Iraq are still not secure. The Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq and the Iraqi federal government are locked in a power struggle for control of the Nineveh Plain, the heart of Christian Iraq. Christians are often subject to land confiscations and other abuses. Under Article 26 of Iraq’s National ID Card law, numerous Christians have been legally registered as Muslims by the Iraqi government, a form of forced religious conversion.
“The future for Christians in Iraq is highly uncertain,” Veldkamp concluded. “But Iraqi Christians have not yet lost hope. They are persevering. And they deserve our support.”
The full text of Veldkamp’s presentation follows.
It’s a privilege to speak about the Christians of Iraq, and the threats they face as they try to preserve their communities and their families in their ancient homeland. It’s a special privilege to do it alongside Madame Pascale Warda, who is the former minister for immigration and refugees for the Republic of Iraq. She is one of Iraq’s most widely-known and widely-respected Christian leaders. She has been fighting for human rights in Iraq since the dark days of Saddam Hussein, and she is still persevering today.
I will use my time to set the scene, and give some background about the situation for Christians in Iraq, and then Madame Warda will speak in greater detail about the challenges facing Iraqi Christians today.
Christian Solidarity International is an interconfessional human rights group. Our mission is to support religious freedom and human dignity for all people, and we have a special commitment to persecuted Christians and other persecuted peoples. We were founded in Switzerland in 1977, and that is where we still have our headquarters today. We bring humanitarian aid to persecuted Christians in nearly twenty countries around the world, and we also work to make their plight known, and to advocate for policy changes to bring their persecution to an end.
We have been working in Iraq since 2007, after we realized how terrible the situation for Iraq’s Christians had become in the midst of the United States’ war in Iraq. Pascale Warda and her husband, William Warda, introduced us to the country and helped us to get started in our relief work there. The organization they founded, the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, has been our partner organization in Iraq ever since.
Iraqi Christians in History
Iraq is home to some of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Church tradition teaches us that Christianity was first brought to Iraq by the Apostle Thomas.
Unlike most Christians in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Holy Land, Iraqi Christians as a rule do not identify as Arabs. They are the descendants of the peoples who lived in Iraq before the Arab Islamic conquests – the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Aramaeans, the Armenians, and the Syriacs. Most of them speak versions of Neo-Aramaic, a modern version of the language spoken by Jesus Christ.
Around 80% of Iraqi Christians belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church, a church which is in communion with Rome, but has its own patriarch and uses the East Syriac Rite. Other Iraqi Christians belong to the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic Churches, the Ancient Church of the East, the Armenian Apostolic and Armenian Catholic Churches, and some smaller Protestant churches.
Iraq as we know it today became an independent state in 1932. Throughout Iraq’s independence period, Christians have struggled to find peace in the country. Within months of independence, Iraq’s new government massacred thousands of Christians at Simele, sending tens of thousands of Christians fleeing into Syria.
In the 1980s, the dictator Saddam Hussein destroyed 120 Assyrian Christian villages and had over a thousand Christians murdered, including priests who refused to support his regime.
Still, by 2003, there were still 1.5 million Christians in Iraq, or about 6% of the population. This was one of the largest Christian populations in the Middle East.
The Mass Exodus and Genocide of Iraqi Christians: 2003-2017
The U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq would drive Iraqi Christians to the brink of extinction. The invasion set off a sectarian civil war between Sunni Muslim jihadists, led by the organization called the Islamic State in Iraq, which declared loyalty to al Qaeda, and Shi’ite militia groups, some of which were backed by Iran. Both sides targeted Christians. The U.S. occupation was either unwilling or unable to protect them. So they fled the country, in hundreds of thousands.
The worst attack on Iraqi Christians occurred on on October 31, 2010. On that day, gunmen and a suicide bomber from the Islamic State in Iraq stormed the Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdad and killed 58 people during mass. Two days later, the Islamic State in Iraq declared in a statement, “All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets.”
After 2010, the war in Iraq subsided, and so did violence against Christians.
But next door in Syria, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and their allies in Europe were encouraging a rebellion against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. This rebellion turned into yet another decade-long civil war. And in this war, the Islamic State in Iraq was reborn under a new name – the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. (Later they renamed themselves simply “the Islamic State.”)
In 2014, ISIS came storming back into Iraq. In June 2014, they occupied Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. In August 2014, they overran the Nineveh Plain, the heart of the ancient homeland of Iraq’s Christians. Around 200,000 Iraqi Christians fled for their lives, almost overnight. ISIS kidnapped and enslaved hundreds of Christian women. But ISIS reserved special ferocity for Iraq’s Yazidi community – an ancient religious group that Islamic fundamentalists revile as polytheists. ISIS executed thousands of Yazidi men, and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women, most of whom are still missing today.
In 2017, a coalition of Iraqi government forces, Kurdish forces, and Iranian-backed militias took back Mosul from ISIS, while American planes pounded the city from the air. Today, ISIS does not control any more territory in Iraq.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians have been able to return to their towns in the Nineveh Plain. Around 200 kidnapped Christian women have returned to their families – an estimated 30 are still missing.
The wounds of Iraq’s Christian communities are grave. If 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq in 2003, today, there are probably only around 500,000. The rest have fled the country. This continued out-migration under pressure is an existential threat to the future of Christians in Iraq.
If Christianity is to survive in Iraq, then above all, Christians need security. They need to be able to own land and start businesses and raise their children in their faith, without fear that they will be bombed, or harassed by militiamen, or see their children taken away from them.
Victims of a Power Struggle
Today, there are two primary threats to Christian security in Iraq. The first is the conflict between the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan regional government, which is mirrored by the larger conflict between Turkey, Iran, and the Untied States. The second is a culture of Muslim supremacy in Iraq. It was this culture that facilitated the terror that drove nearly a million Iraqi Christians out of their homeland, and this culture endures.
Most of northern Iraq is ruled by the Kurdistan Regional Government, which has been essentially autonomous since 1991. The Kurdistan Regional Government has generally good relations with both the United States and with Turkey. But it is locked in a struggle with the Iraqi federal government, a struggle for control over land and resources. Because Christians and Yazidis are weaker than other groups in Iraq, the Kurdish and Iraqi governments tend to fight over their land, especially the Nineveh Plain.
Christians who live in the Nineveh Plain have to constantly negotiate between the Kurdish armed forces and security services on the one hand, and the Iraqi federal army and the Popular Mobilization Forces on the other. The Popular Mobilization Forces are a powerful network of Shi’ite militias, backed by Iran, which helped defeat ISIS in 2017. All of these groups will harass Christians, to keep them from cooperating with the other side, or simply because they can.
It should be remembered that many of these Shi’ite militias are the same militias that targeted Christians during Iraq’s civil war. These groups continue to control much of the Nineveh Plain, and prevent Christians from accessing their property. The Popular Mobilization Forces have set up their own so-called “Christian” militia, the Babylon Brigades, to try to control the region. Unfortunately, Kurdish security forces often treat Christians badly as well.
This conflict also keeps Christians from having real representation in Iraq’s government. In Iraq, a certain number of seats in both the federal parliament and the Kurdish regional parliament are reserved for Christians. But both the Kurdish government and the Iraqi federal government have set up Christian political parties under their control, and manipulate the electoral system to ensure that they win. As a result, almost no one in the Iraqi government really represents Christians.
In 2023, Iraq’s president revoked his government’s recognition of Cardinal Louis Sako as the Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq. Cardinal Sako claimed that this was punishment for his trying to defend Christian land rights in the Nineveh Plain. He then moved from Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, in protest. He was able to return to Baghdad in 2024, but finally resigned under pressure three months ago, in March 2026.
A culture of Muslim supremacy
In Iraq, all citizens have their religion registered with the state. The religion that an Iraqi person is registered as has many effects on their life, but above all, it affects who they can marry. A Christian man cannot legally marry a Muslim woman. A Christian woman can marry a Muslim man, but their children will automatically be considered Muslims.
Under Article 26 of Iraq’s National ID Card law, if either a mother or a father converts to Islam, all of their children are automatically converted to Islam as well. This often happens when a husband or a wife wants to get out of an unhappy marriage – they will convert to Islam in order to be able to obtain a divorce, and then their children are stuck registered as Muslims, no matter what religion they would choose for themselves. This problem affects thousands of Iraqi Christians.
The culture of Muslim supremacy shows itself in other ways. When Muslims encroach on the property of Christians, it is very difficult for Christians to get the courts to grant relief. Even if the courts do intervene, it is very difficult to get the police to implement the court’s decision. Thus, Christians are easy targets.
In 2024, the Iraqi government banned nearly all sales of alcohol in the country. Because drinking alcohol is against Islamic law, this decision mostly hurts Christians.
In 2023, the governor of the province of Karbala banned celebrating Christmas and New Year’s in his province. His office published a video clip of him walking through town, demanding that shop owners remove their Christmas trees.
The European Parliament, and European governments, can support Christians in Iraq by asking the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdish Regional Government to take tangible steps to fix some of these problems.
The Iraqi government should be asked to repeal Article 26 of the National ID Card Law, and to revoke its alcohol ban.
The Iraqi government should be asked to ensure the autonomy of the Chaldean Catholic Church, and all churches in Iraq.
The Kurdish Regional Government should be asked to demonstrate progress in protecting Christian property rights.
Both governments should be asked to reform their electoral systems to ensure genuine Christian representation.
The European Parliament can also support Iraqi Christians by dialoguing with local Iraqi Christian civil society groups – especially the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization. Their reports should inform the dialogue that European leaders have with leaders in Iraq.
The future for Christians in Iraq is highly uncertain. But Iraqi Christians have not yet lost hope. They are persevering. And they deserve our support.
If you’ll permit me, I want to share a final word, not about Iraq, but about a Syrian Christian leader named Suleiman Khalil. Suleiman Khalil is the former mayor of a town in Syria called Sadad. In November 2015, ISIS launched an attack on Sadad. But Mr. Khalil successfully organized the defense of his town, saving hundreds of lives. He is a true hero.
In February last year, Syria’s new government arrested Suleiman Khalil. It has held him in prison without charge for the past 16 months. His family has asked us to work for his release
