The Assyrian Democratic Movement, popularly known as Zowaa, is an Assyrian political party situated in Iraq, and one of the main Assyrian parties within the Iraqi parliament. The Assyrian Democratic Movement states its aims are to establish equal citizenship rights with the rest of the Iraqi people without discrimination on the basis of nationality, belief, religious affiliation, culture, language and other characteristics of the native Chaldo-Assyrian Syriac people of Iraq, to acknowledge the past massacres committed against them and to ensure they are never repeated again.
Ankawa is a suburb of Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It is located 8 kilometres (5 mi) northwest of downtown Erbil. The suburb is predominantly populated by Assyrians, most of whom adhere to the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Sarkis Aghajan Mamendo, is an Iraqi Assyrian politician who was appointed Minister for Finance and Economy in the cabinet of Iraqi Kurdistan on 7 May 2006.
Kurdistan Region is an autonomous administrative entity within the Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurdish-majority divisions of Arab-majority Iraq: the Erbil Governorate, the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, the Duhok Governorate, and Halabja Governorate. The KRI is bordered by Iran to the east, by Turkey to the north, and by Syria to the west. It does not govern all of Iraqi Kurdistan, and lays claim to the disputed territories of northern Iraq; these territories have a predominantly non-Arab population and were subject to the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns throughout the late 20th century. Though the KRI's autonomy was realized in 1992, one year after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, these northern territories remain contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Government of Iraq to the present day. In light of the dispute, the KRI's constitution declares the city of Kirkuk as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. However, the KRI does not control Kirkuk, and the Kurdistan Region Parliament is based in Erbil. In 2014, when the Syria-based Islamic State began their Northern Iraq offensive and invaded the country, the Iraqi Armed Forces retreated from most of the disputed territories. The KRI's Peshmerga then entered and took control of them for the duration of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). In October 2017, following the defeat of the Islamic State, the Iraqi Armed Forces attacked the Peshmerga and reasserted control over the disputed territories.
The Parliament of Kurdistan, also called the Kurdish Parliament (IKP), is the parliament of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. It is made up of representatives from the various parties, lists or slates that are elected every four years by the inhabitants of the provinces of Kurdistan Region currently governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. In 2009 an amendment was applied to the Kurdistan Election Law of the year 1992, and since then the body was referred to as Kurdish Parliament instead of its previous name the Kurdish National Assembly.
Assyrian politics in Iraq have been taking many different turns since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Today, there are many different Assyrian political parties in Iraq. The main Assyrian party that came out from the 2005 elections was the Assyrian Democratic Movement. However, Sarkis Aghajan began to challenge its power beginning in 2006 with the opening of Ishtar TV and the KDP-affiliated Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council.
Erbil, also called Hawler, is the capital and most populated city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The city is in the Erbil Governorate.
Nawshirwan Mustafa was an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the General Coordinator of the Movement for Change and the leader of the opposition in the Kurdistan Region from 1 April 2009 to his death on 19 May 2017.
Yonadam Yousip Kanna is an Assyrian politician and the first Christian member of the Iraqi National Assembly since 2003. Kanna also served as the Secretary General of the Assyrian Democratic Movement from 2001 to 2023.
Since the early 20th century several proposals have been made for the establishment of an autonomous area or an independent state for the Syriac-speaking modern Assyrians in northern Iraq.
Human rights in Iraqi Kurdistan refer to the human rights issue in the autonomous area of Kurdistan Region.
The Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party or PÇDK, is an illegal political party active in Iraq's Kurdistan Region, founded in 2002. It is part of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), along with the larger Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
An independence referendum for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq was held on 25 September 2017, with preliminary results showing approximately 92.73 percent of votes cast in favour of independence. Despite reporting that the independence referendum would be non-binding, the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) characterised it as binding, although they claimed that an affirmative result would trigger the start of state building and negotiations with Iraq rather than an immediate declaration of independence of Kurdistan. The referendum's legality was rejected by the federal government of Iraq.
Parliamentary elections took place in Kurdistan Region on 30 September 2018 to elect Parliament. The election came a year after a failed bid for independence and left the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) with 45 seats, that positioning it to lead the next regional government. Announcement of the results was delayed for three weeks. The KDP's historic rival and junior coalition partner in government, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was in second place with 21 seats. The results suggest that Masoud Barzani’s KDP will take a dominant position in Kurdish politics.
The Sons of Mesopotamia, also known as Abnaa Al-Nahrain and Bnay Nahrain, is an ethnic Assyrian political party based in northern Iraq. It was founded in 2013, and is headquartered in Erbil, Iraq. Established to further the political objectives of the Assyrian people in Iraq, the party currently holds no seats in the Kurdistan Region Parliament. According to its official website, the party exists as a renewed commitment to the Assyrian national cause, for the betterment of the Assyrian people, and to advance their struggle for legitimate rights in Iraq.
The 2018 Assyrian elections in Iraq were the first elections since the Islamic State invasion of Iraq, including the Assyrian heartland, the Nineveh Plains in August 2014. A parliamentary election will be held in Iraq on 12 May 2018. Of the 329 seats in the Iraqi parliament, 5 are reserved for the Christian minorities. The five reserved seats are separated one for each governorate of: Baghdad, Duhok, Erbil, Kirkuk and Nineveh. At the time of voting, only about 200,000 Assyrians remained in the country.
Vala Fareed is a Minister of State for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She was previously elected as the first female speaker of the legislature in February 2019.
Hemin Hawrami, ,, is a Kurdish politician, writer and academic. He has been the Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament since February 2019. He is a senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. He was elected as a Member of the Kurdistan Parliament in September 2018. He was the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party's foreign relations (2011–2017) and later a senior adviser to President Masoud Barzani (2017–2019) for political and international affairs. He holds a PhD in international relations and he has written eight books in Kurdish on Kurdish politics.
The Assyrian Policy Institute (API) is a non-governmental and nonprofit organization based in the United States that primarily advocates for the rights of Assyrians and other minorities in the Middle East including Yazidis and Mandaeans.
The Iraqi governorate elections were held for the first time in almost 10 years on December 18, 2023, after many delays, mostly due to the demonstrations demanding the end of the existing political system in 2019. Governorates under the KRG did not participate. For the Assyrians, reserved seats were allocated in the following governorates: Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Ninewa. While the goal of these seats being reserved is to have Assyrian community representation in the respective governorate councils, Iraqi election law allows anyone, be it Assyrian or not, to vote for them. This had led to the Assyrian reserved seats be hijacked by pro-Iranian parties, with mobilization of mostly Shia Arabs voting for the Babylon Movement.
