Alia Abdel-Razak, who has been married for over a decade, is one of a million Iraqis who have been denied vital civil registration documents and are often caught in legal limbo in a country paralyzed by bureaucracy and the turmoil of war.
The 37-year-old faces countless hurdles to get her children to school and is unable to enroll her family to receive the food grants she and her husband so desperately need.
As a mother of four, Abdel-Razak relies on a volunteer lawyer from the aid organization International Rescue Committee (IRC) to help her navigate the labyrinthine processes needed to get her paperwork in order.
Like many others, she struggles with endless bureaucracy – but also the aftermath of the country’s grueling fight against Islamic State – to obtain documents such as marriage certificates and birth certificates.
“I don’t have the means, lawyers want $300-500. Where can I get that money if I don’t even have enough to eat?” she told AFP.
Her dilapidated apartment in Mosul, with bare concrete floors and broken windows patched with cardboard, bears witness to her daily struggle.
She married in 2012 and gave birth to their first daughter a year later.
But in 2014, IS seized Mosul and declared it the capital of its “caliphate”, expelling local officials in favor of their own administration.
Restricted Freedom
The lack of civil status documents hinders access to basic services such as “education, health care and social services”, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR.
It can also “result in restricted movement, increased risk of arrest and detention,” the agency says.
Abdel-Razak’s lawyer has initiated court proceedings to have her marriage and children officially recognized. A decision is expected in January.
In the meantime, they have achieved a small victory – their first-born, Nazek, has just started school at the age of almost 10.
But obtaining some of the documents requested by the judge required three visits just to put the Secret Service seal on some papers.
A major hurdle was the fact that her imprisoned brother was accused of having connections to IS.
According to the United Nations, 1 million Iraqis live with at least one missing civil status document in a country still struggling to recover five years after ISIS’ defeat in 2017.
Marriage contracts entered into under the rule of the jihadi group have yet to be recognized, as have the children born of those unions.
In addition, many of the civilian offices that kept such documents were destroyed when ISIS came to power or in the years-long struggle to drive out the jihadists, according to the spokesman for the Ministry of Migration and Displaced Persons.
In cooperation with the Interior Ministry, his ministry is coordinating mobile missions in camps to allow displaced people to get their missing documents, Ali Jahangir said.
IRC communications coordinator Jordan Lesser-Roy pointed to the work of NGOs in raising awareness among government agencies and reducing the waiting time for such documents.
“You need the mayor’s approval for these processes … and then of course you need a change in policy,” she said, calling for budget increases for the Directorate of Civil Affairs and more “mobile missions.”
I have nowhere to go
In a report released in September, aid groups including the IRC pointed to the added complexities faced by families “of perceived ISIS affiliation”.
To obtain a birth certificate, mothers must provide DNA samples from up to three male relatives, and these documents can only be obtained in Baghdad.
They must also “prove the whereabouts of the child’s father in the form of a death certificate or proof of imprisonment”.
According to the report, “this is an impossibility for many households where the head of household died or disappeared during the conflict”.
Hussein Adnan, 23, lost his identity card while fleeing the fight against IS in 2017. He was subsequently arrested and spent five months in pre-trial detention before being declared innocent.
He was married and had a son under the rule of the jihadist group.
With the help of an IRC lawyer, Adnan was able to obtain a divorce after his marriage and six-year-old were recognized, although he is yet to receive a birth certificate for his son.
The process was further complicated when his ex-wife remarried and in the meantime became pregnant again.
During his detention he was “beaten and tortured” and despite family pressure to work, he remains paralyzed for fear of another arrest. “I can’t work or go anywhere … I’m staying home until my ID card is issued,” he said.
