The U.S. Department of State’s 2023 International Religious Freedom Report on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, concluded that restrictions on freedom of religion “remained widespread outside the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR).”

In areas of Iraq outside the Kurdistan Region, the law does not provide a mechanism for new religious groups to obtain legal recognition, the report notes. 

In contrast, religious groups in the Kurdistan Region can obtain recognition by registering with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs. To register, a group must have at least 150 adherents, provide documentation on the sources of its financial support, and demonstrate it is not “anti-Islam.”

According to the KRG Directorate of Christian Affairs, 15 Protestant and evangelical Christian groups are registered in the Kurdistan Region.

The report notes that almost one million of the country’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees reside in the Kurdistan Region, with approximately 132,000 living in 25 registered camps and the rest living in informal settlements, according to the KRG’s Joint Crisis Coordination Center. 

The report confirms that KRG officials committed not to keep the  camps open until the IDPs had returned to their areas of origin voluntarily, adding that, of the IDPs in the Kurdistan Region, 40% were Sunni Arabs, 30% were Yezidis, 13% were Kurds (of several religious affiliations), 7% were Christians, and the remainder were members of other religious groups.

It also said that there have been limited efforts to implement the UN-backed Sinjar Agreement signed by the federal government and the KRG in 2020, “which included expanded reconstruction efforts to support voluntary returns of Yezidis still displaced in the IKR and abroad.”

Read More: Sinjar Agreement Not Implemented: USCIRF

The annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom published on May 1 also underlined that the Sinjar Agreement had not yet been implemented and called on the United States to encourage Iraq “to comprehensively implement the Sinjar Agreement with full inclusion of the Yezidi community; and to conduct a national and regional dialogue on potential constitutional and statutory reforms to more effectively protect religious freedom and ensure religious communities’ political representation.”

The 2023 report from the U.S. Department of State also quotes Yezidi activists and officials, who say that Yezidis continue to fear returning to Sinjar because of poor infrastructure, the lack of an empowered local government, and the presence of Iran-aligned militia groups as well as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is targeted by Turkish airstrikes.

“Several times during the year, Turkish airstrikes struck facilities used by Sinjar Resistance Unit Yezidi fighters affiliated with the PKK in Sinjar District. ISIS remnants also threaten the security of Sinjar,” the report mentions.