A life of struggle against violence, fundamentalism, and patriarchy, ending with her assassination in Baghdad in 2026
“In Iraq we had dictators and wars, but never the mass enslavement of women we saw later.” Yanar Mohammed
Yanar Mohammed devoted her life to the freedom of women in Iraq. For more than twenty years she was one of the most courageous and radical voices of Middle Eastern feminism, challenging dictatorships, militias, religious fundamentalism, and patriarchal traditions. On March 2, 2026, she was assassinated in Baghdad, shot by armed men outside her home. She was 66 years old.
Born in Baghdad in 1960, she grew up in a country marked by deep political and social tensions. From a young age she developed a strong political consciousness and became involved with democratic and left-wing movements. During the years of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship she was forced into exile and lived for a period in Canada. After the fall of the regime in 2003, she decided to return to Iraq despite the obvious risks. For her, it was important to take part directly in building a feminist movement in her own country.
Shortly after her return she became one of the founders of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, one of the most important feminist organizations in the country. The association was created to defend women from domestic violence, forced marriage, human trafficking, and so-called “honor killings.” In a context marked by war, military occupation, and the growing influence of religious militias, the organization’s work was extremely dangerous.
One of the most important projects led by Mohammed was the creation of a network of secret shelters for women threatened with death or persecuted by their families. In Iraq, women’s shelters were for a long time illegal or obstructed by authorities, but these safe houses allowed hundreds of women to escape violence. Mohammed believed that saving one woman also meant challenging the entire system of oppression surrounding her.
Alongside her work with the shelters, she took part in public debate through conferences, articles, and international interventions. She was also the editor of the feminist newspaper Al-Mousawat (“Equality”), which denounced legal and social discrimination against women and openly criticized the power of religious fundamentalism in Iraqi politics. For her work she received several international recognitions, including the Rafto Prize in 2016 and inclusion in the BBC 100 Women list in 2018.
Her activism, however, also made her a target. Over the years she received numerous death threats from extremist groups and conservative circles hostile to her work. Despite this, she continued to speak publicly and to defend women’s rights to personal freedom, autonomy, and protection from violence.
On the morning of March 2, 2026, in Baghdad, armed men shot her near her home in the northern part of the city. She was rushed to the hospital in critical condition but died shortly afterward from her wounds. Her organization described the attack as a targeted assassination against one of the leading defenders of women’s rights in Iraq. Iraqi authorities opened an investigation, but the perpetrators have not yet been identified.
The death of Yanar Mohammed represents an enormous loss for the Iraqi feminist movement and for international human rights networks. Yet the structures she helped build — the shelters, the networks of solidarity, and the feminist organizations — continue to exist. Her legacy lies not only in the words she spoke or the campaigns she led, but above all in the lives she helped save and in the generation of activists she helped inspire.
