Pioneering Iraqi feminist Yanar Mohammed assassinated outside Baghdad home

BAGHDAD — Yanar Mohammed, one of Iraq’s most prominent women’s rights activists and founder of the country’s first shelters for survivors of domestic violence and trafficking, was assassinated Monday morning outside her residence in Baghdad when two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on her at 9 a.m., the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq announced.

Mohammed was transferred to hospital but died of her injuries. No group has claimed responsibility.

“We strongly condemn this cowardly terrorist crime and consider it a direct targeting of feminist struggle and the values of freedom and equality,” her organization said, calling on authorities to “immediately reveal the perpetrators and the parties behind them and ensure their accountability under the law.”

Mohammed, 65, was born in Baghdad and co-founded the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq in 2003 after returning from Canada, where she had lived since the early 1990s. She opened Iraq’s first women’s shelters that same year, building a network that eventually spanned multiple cities and provided refuge for more than 1,300 women fleeing honor killings, domestic violence and trafficking, according to the organization. She also published the feminist newspaper Al-Mousawat and ran classes for women’s rights activists. She was awarded the Gruber Foundation Women’s Rights Prize in 2008 and Norway’s Rafto Prize in 2016, and was listed among BBC’s 100 Women in 2018.

Mohammed had faced death threats throughout her career. In 2004, the Iraqi Islamist group Jaish al-Sahaba sent her two explicit threats linked directly to her gender equality work. She had also faced repeated attempts by the Iraqi government to shut down her organization and revoke its registration, and at one point said she was forced to leave Iraq after authorities issued a warrant accusing her of human trafficking — a charge she denied.

Raz Salayi, a human rights researcher who monitors Iraq, said on X that “the absolute lack of will to prosecute killers in countless previous assassinations has allowed this to happen.”

Iraqi authorities have not issued a statement on the killing.