Married for more than a decade, Alia Abdel-Razak is one of a million Iraqis deprived of crucial civil status documents, often caught in legal limbo in a country paralyzed by bureaucracy and the ravages of war.
The 37-year-old has to overcome countless hurdles just to get her children into school, and she cannot register her family to obtain the food subsidies she and her husband so desperately need.
A mother of four, Abdel-Razak relies on a pro-bono lawyer from aid group the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to help her navigate the labyrinthine processes required to get her papers in order.
Like many others, she struggles with endless red tape — but also the fallout from the country’s grueling battle to defeat the Islamic State (IS) group — to obtain documents like marriage and birth certificates.
“I don’t have the means, lawyers want US$300 to US$500. Where can I get this money when I don’t even have enough to eat?” she told reporters.
Her dilapidated Mosul apartment bears witness to her daily struggle, with its bare concrete floors and broken windows patched up with cardboard.
She was married in 2012 and gave birth to her first daughter a year later.
However in 2014, the IS seized Mosul and declared it the capital of its “caliphate,” driving out local officials in favor of their own administration.
The absence of civil status documents obstructs access to basic services such as “education, healthcare and social security benefits,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said.
It can also “lead to restricted freedom of movement, increased risk of arrest and detention,” the agency said.
Abdel-Razak’s lawyer has launched a legal process to have her marriage and children officially recognized, with a decision expected this month.
In the meantime, they have scored one small victory — at nearly 10 years old, her firstborn, Nazek, has just joined school for the first time.
However, to obtain some of the documents requested by the judge, it took three visits just to get the intelligence services’ seal on some papers.
One major hurdle has been the fact that her jailed brother is accused of having ties with the IS.
According to the UN, about 1 million Iraqis are living with at least one missing civil status document in a country still struggling to recover five years on from the IS’ defeat back in 2017.
Marriage contracts agreed under the extremist group’s rule have yet to be recognized, along with the children born out of these unions.
On top of that, many of the civil bureaus that kept such documentation on record were destroyed when the IS rose to power or in the years-long battle to drive the group out, Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displaced Persons spokesman Ali Jahangir said.
In cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, his ministry coordinates mobile missions in camps to allow displaced people to obtain their missing documents, he said.
IRC communications coordinator Jordan Lesser-Roy pointed to the work of non-governmental organizations in raising awareness among state bodies and reducing the waiting time for such paperwork.
“You need mayoral approval for these processes ... and then of course you need policy change,” she said, calling for budget increases to the Civil Affairs Directorate and for more “mobile missions.”
In a report published in September, aid groups including the IRC pointed to the added complexities faced by families “with 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 provide “evidence of the whereabouts of the child’s father in the form of a death certificate or evidence of incarceration.”
This is “an impossibility for many households where the head of household died or disappeared during the conflict,” the report said.
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