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Yanar Mohammed

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Yanar Mohammed
ينار محمد
Mohammed in 2013
Born1960 (1960)
Baghdad, Iraq
Died (aged 66)
Baghdad, Iraq
Cause of deathGunshot wounds
Known forDirector of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq

Yanar Mohammed (Arabic: ينار محمد; 1960 – 2 March 2026) was an Iraqi feminist and women's rights activist. She was a co-founder and the director of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), and served as the editor of the newspaper Al-Mousawat (Equality). Mohammed started the first shelters for women in Iraq in 2003, protecting them from honor killing and sex trafficking, a network that had expanded to 11 houses in five cities by 2018. Between 2003 and 2019, her shelters served more than 800 women.

Early life and activism

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Mohammed was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1960.[1] She was raised and lived in the city within a liberal family where her mother was a school teacher and her father was an engineer. Her grandfather on her mother's side was religious, and a prominent man in his community who "definitely deserved the honorary title of Mullah", except that he married his ex-wife's fourteen-year-old younger sister, which first spurred Yanar Mohammed to take up the cause of women's rights.[2]

She graduated from the University of Baghdad in Architecture with a bachelor's degree in 1984,[3] and a master's in 1993. After postgraduate studies and travel to Canada, she was active in the Worker-Communist Party in Iraq which she left later in 2018.[4]

In 1995, her family moved from Iraq to Canada.[2] In 1998, Mohammed founded an organization called Defence of Iraqi Women's Rights, the predecessor to the OWFI.[5]

After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mohammed returned to Baghdad, a return which she funded by a lifetime of savings and work in architecture.[6] Upon her return to Iraq, Mohammed launched the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), a group active in supporting women's rights since the U.S.-led invasion. [5] The OWFI set up women's shelters and safe houses to protect women threatened by domestic abuse and Honor killings, including the first women's shelter in Iraq,[5] and supported survivors of the violence against women committed by the Islamic State.[7] They also led ongoing activities against trafficking of young women, ran classes to teach women activists how to confront intolerance, advocated equality for women on Iraqi radio and television. Mohammed's work in the OWFI established a network of women's shelters in four cities around Iraq, serving more than 870 women over 16 years (2003-2019). For her work in this group, Mohammed was awarded the Gruber Foundation Women's Rights Prize in 2008[8] and Norway's Rafto Prize in 2016.[9] The OWFI has started classes on feminist theory and are gradually expanding into a feminist school.[10]

Mohammed also interviewed and assisted about 30 women held in prison. Following those interviews, one person was saved from a death sentence while some were saved from re-entering sex-trafficking circles.[11] She also edited the feminist newsletter Al-Mousawat.[12]

In 2006, she spoke at the World Social Forum in Caracas in Venezuela.[13] In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.[14] Mohammed studied in the University of Toronto within the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and wrote a Master's thesis under the title "Theorizing Feminist Struggle in Post-War Iraq 2003-2018".[15]

In 2020, Mohammed was a regular protester at Tahrir Square in Baghdad.[1] By the mid-2020s, she returned to Canada after being threatened in Iraq with arrest.[16] Mohammed criticized Iraqi legislation "[enshrining] Shia religious jurisprudence in family law, which would give husbands automatic custody over children and a unilateral right to divorce without the wife's consent," and which would lessen restrictions on child marriage.[17][18]

Political views

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Yanar Mohammed (second from left) at the Die Linke conference in Berlin in 2013.

Yanar Mohammed campaigned for women's rights, secularism and democracy.[19] She was a member of the Communist Alternative Organisation in Iraq.[18]

She was strongly critical of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, stating the "U.S. occupation turned the streets of Iraq into a no-women zone",[20] and "the American occupation that is willing to do genocide, or ... political Islam, that will make us live in a completely inhuman and unliberated way of life", thus preferring a third way to build freedom in Iraq.[21] Speaking in an interview in 2007, she stated "The U.S. troops need to leave immediately, with no conditions."[22] Mohammed then believed that the U.S. occupation of Iraq fueled the insurgency and violence prevalent in post-2003 Iraq, causing a detrimental effect on women's rights.[23]

While not anti-religion, Mohammed was a strong believer in secular government, arguing that women's equality can only be achieved through secular government because an Islamic government would hurt women's rights and freedom.[24] In 2003, she highlighted the contrast between the treatment of her grandmothers in the mid-20th century and the regressing daily contemporary experience of women in Iraq.[2]

As a result of her work on women's rights that questioned extreme interpretations of Islam, Mohammed was subjected to death threats, including from the Islamic State, and was forced to restrict her movements. Jaish al-Sahaba, part of the Iraqi Islamist group the Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation, sent her two death threats in 2004. These were described as directly related to her efforts for gender equality in Iraqi society. After many years of her being vocal about the protection and rights of women, the threats subsided somewhat before 2008.[25]

Death

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On the morning of 2 March 2026, Mohammed was shot by two unknown armed men near her house in northern Baghdad. She was transported to a hospital, but died of her wounds soon after. Mohammed's shooting came a few days after her return from Canada, which raised suspicions of a targeted assassination.[26][27] She was 66.[28]

The Iraqi Interior Ministry formed an investigative team to analyze the killing.[29] Multiple Iraqi and Kurdish activists have called for a full and thorough investigation into Mohammed's death.[30]

Awards and recognition

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Mohammed is also portrayed in the documentary I Am the Revolution by Benedetta Argentieri.[34]

References

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  1. ^ a b "'Iraq for Iraqis': After decades of corruption, occupation and proxy wars, young Iraqis demand a new future". CBC News. 17 January 2020. Archived from the original on 4 October 2025. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  2. ^ a b c Yanar Mohammed (30 December 2003). "Letters home: Iraq". BBC. Archived from the original on 10 December 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  3. ^ Enloe, Cynthia H. (2004). The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. University of California Press. p. 302.
  4. ^ Enloe, Cynthia H. (2004). The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. University of California Press. p. 301.
  5. ^ a b c "Prominent Iraqi women's rights activist Yanar Mohammed killed by gunmen in suspected assassination". The New Arab. 2 March 2026. Retrieved 2 March 2026.
  6. ^ Enloe, Cynthia H. (2004). The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. University of California Press. p. 203.
  7. ^ "Iraqi women's rights activist Yanar Mohammed killing spurs call for justice". Al Jazeera. 4 March 2026. Archived from the original on 4 March 2026. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
  8. ^ "2008 Gruber Women's Rights Prize Press Release". Gruber.yale.edu. 8 July 2008. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  9. ^ "Defender of women's rights in war-torn Iraq". The Rafto Foundation. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
  10. ^ "Feminist School". Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
  11. ^ "Fighting for women's rights in Iraq". CNN. 2007. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  12. ^ Al-Mousawat is described as "a platform of fearless feminism against Islamic fundamentalism and tribal patriarchal tendencies, and highlights among other violations atrocities against women resulting from the war" in an interview with Mohammed published in the Association for Women's Rights in Development (2006) [1] Archived 11 January 2020 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ "Yanar Mohammed". Gruber Foundation. Archived from the original on 25 April 2024. Retrieved 5 March 2026.
  14. ^ "BBC 100 Women 2018: Who is on the list?". BBC News. 19 November 2018. Archived from the original on 29 October 2019. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  15. ^ Mohammed, Yanar (March 2019). Mojab, Shahrzad (ed.). Theorizing Feminist Struggle in Post-War Iraq. Adult Education and Community Development (MA thesis). Toronto: University of Toronto.
  16. ^ Romandash, Anna (4 May 2023). "Women's Freedom in Iraq: A Conversation With Yanar Mohammed". manaramagazine.org. Archived from the original on 7 February 2026. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  17. ^ "Iraq: Revised 'sectarian' law that raised fears over child marriage passed without vote". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  18. ^ a b "Prominent feminist activist Yanar Mohammed shot dead in Iraq". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  19. ^ "On the Assassination of Feminist Leader Yanar Mohammed". MADRE. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  20. ^ Ferguson, Michaele L.; Marso, Lori Jo, eds. (2007). W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. p. 228.
  21. ^ Ferguson, Michaele L.; Marso, Lori Jo, eds. (2007). W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. p. 233.
  22. ^ "Feminists Yanar Mohammed of Iraq and Dr. Sima Samar of Afghanistan on the Dire Situation for Women Under U.S. Occupation and Rising Fundamentalism". Democracy Now!. 14 May 2007. Archived from the original on 18 May 2019. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  23. ^ Mohammed, Yanar. "Meet Yanar Mohammed, Iraq". Nobel Women's Initiative. Retrieved 3 March 2026. The [US] occupation, in 2003, turned all this around and allowed extremists groups in Iraq to rule and decide how women's rights would be violated.
  24. ^ Baghdad Burning: Girlblog from Iraq. New York: Riverbend. 2005.
  25. ^ Morewitz, Stephen (2008). Death Threats and Violence: New Research and Clinical Perspectives. New York: Springer-Verlag. p. 133.
  26. ^ "اغتيال الناشطة العراقية ينار محمد بطلقات غادرة شمالي بغداد". Kurdistan 24 (in Arabic). 2 March 2026. Retrieved 2 March 2026.
  27. ^ "Iraqi women's rights activist Yanar Mohammed shot dead in Baghdad". The New Indian Express. 3 March 2026. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  28. ^ "Iraq: Ensure accountability for killing of women's rights activist Yanar Mohammed". Amnesty International. 4 March 2026. Archived from the original on 4 March 2026. Retrieved 4 March 2026.
  29. ^ "Women activist shot dead outside her Baghdad home". Shafaq News. 2 March 2026. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  30. ^ "Kurdish activists demand justice following Yanar Mohammed assassination". Shafaq News. 3 March 2026. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  31. ^ "Yanar Mohammed". Gruber Foundation. Yale University. Archived from the original on 5 March 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  32. ^ "Yanar Mohammed". The Rafto Foundation. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  33. ^ "The 2025 Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law". Federal Foreign Office. 10 December 2025. Archived from the original on 12 December 2025. Retrieved 12 December 2025.
  34. ^ "I am The Revolution". possibilefilm.com (in Italian). Archived from the original on 17 March 2018. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
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