The bodies of hundreds of thousands of victims of unlawful killings remain buried in mass graves across Iraq, Human Rights Watch said today. The graves contain the bodies of victims of successive conflicts, including Saddam Hussein’s genocide against the Kurds in 1988 and mass killings by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) between 2014-17. 

The United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL (UNITAD), created by the UN Security Council in 2017 to document serious crimes committed by ISIS in Iraq, has supported the Iraqi government’s Mass Graves Directorate and the Medico-Legal Directorate in the excavation of 67 mass graves related to ISIS during its mandate. But in late 2023, at the request of the Iraqi government, the UN Security Council elected to extend UNITAD’s mandate for only one additional year, meaning that it will stop its work in September 2024. 

“Mass graves are painful reminders of the most violent chapters of Iraqi history and exhuming them is crucial for allowing families of victims – and the nation – to get any hope of justice and heal from these wounds,” said Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People have a right to know the fate of their loved ones and give them a proper and dignified burial.” 

The Strategic Center for Human Rights in Iraq estimates that Iraq’s mass graves contain the remains of 400,000 people. Iraq has one of the highest numbers of missing persons in the world, estimated between 250,000 and 1 million, many of whom are believed to be buried in mass graves.

To advance justice and accountability for victims and their families, the Iraqi government should intensify efforts to exhume graves, identify victims, return remains to families for proper burials, issue death certificates, and compensate families, as required under Iraqi law, Human Rights Watch said. 

Officials have opened 288 mass graves since 2003, Dhiaa Kareem Taama, the Iraqi federal government’s director general of the Department of Mass Graves Affairs and Protection, told Human Rights Watch. “As long as there is no unified national registry, there is no way for us to know how many people may be buried in mass graves,” Taama said. 

Between 2017 and 2023, UNITAD assisted Iraqi authorities to exhume 1,237 victims of the Camp Speicher massacre, where ISIS killed 1,700 soldiers, cadets, and volunteers escaping from the Tikrit Air Academy between June 12-14, 2014, from 14 graves and two riverine crime scenes. UNITAD’s June 2024 report finds reasonable grounds to believe the massacre was undertaken with genocidal intent, amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Most recently, on May 28, 2024, Iraqi authorities and UNITAD announced that they had begun the excavation of the Alo Antar pit, a mass grave in Tel Afar district. The grave, about 60 kilometers west of Mosul, is believed to contain the bodies of over 1,000 people. Between 2014 and 2017, ISIS used the pit for mass executions and dumping bodies. 

But as the September 17 deadline to terminate UNITAD’s operations in Iraq approaches, there is concern that the gap they leave may not be adequately filled by Iraqi authorities. 

“Our one hope as victims and survivors was UNITAD,” a man whose father, brother, and two uncles were found in a mass grave south of Sinjar told Human Rights Watch. “Many things are going to get worse when they leave. I’m not sure that the Iraqi government has the capacity to fill the gap that will be left by UNITAD’s departure.”

“Of course, there will be a vacuum when they [UNITAD] leave,” Taama said. “But the Iraqi government has issued its decision that the team’s mandate has expired, so we must have an alternative plan.”

The massive caseload coupled with limitations in the Iraqi government’s capacity has meant that for families of victims, the process has been painstakingly slow.

The remains of one man’s father, brother, and two uncles were found in a mass grave discovered by a shepherd in Sabahia, Sinjar district, in October 2017. Two years later, the remains were exhumed and sent to Baghdad for identification. “It has been five years, and until now we haven’t had any news from the Medico-Legal Directorate,” the man said. “We don’t know why.”

The man said he is unable to obtain death certificates for his relatives until their remains are identified. Without the death certificates, his family is unable to apply for compensation paid to families of victims of terrorism under Law No. 20 of 2009.

Iraq has just one laboratory authorized to conduct DNA identification of remains exhumed from mass graves, the Medico-Legal Directorate’s forensic DNA laboratory in Baghdad, Taama told Human Rights Watch. 

In preparation for its departure, UNITAD has been supporting the Medico-Legal Directorate’s forensic DNA laboratory to obtain accreditation from the International Organization for Standards, ISO/IEC 17025. Accreditation would mean that determinations made by the laboratory in Baghdad would be internationally recognized, allowing its findings to be accepted as evidence in courts globally. 

Khabat Abdullah, an adviser at the Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), told Human Rights Watch that the KRG Ministry of Interior’s criminal forensics department runs a lab with the capacity to do DNA identification of five to seven remains per day. But under Iraq’s Law on Protection of Mass Graves (Law No. 5 of 2006), only the lab in Baghdad is authorized to analyze DNA samples taken from mass graves.

Sabah Sabri, whose father and uncle were killed by ISIS in 2014 and dumped in a mass grave in Khanasour, told Human Rights Watch, “I recognized my father by his clothes. My neighbor also recognized his father because he had his medicines and the house keys on him.” 

Kurdish officials took DNA samples from Sabah and other community members to confirm the identities of those in the grave. Sabah later received official confirmation that his father was among those found in the grave. 

Despite this, Sabah said that his family still has not received any death certificate for his father as of July. “The federal Iraqi government refuses to recognize the DNA tests conducted by Kurdish authorities, so they aren’t giving us a death certificate. The KRG told us they would issue a death certificate for us, but federal authorities told us they wouldn’t recognize that, either.”

Without the death certificate, the family can’t claim his retirement benefits or any other government support. “I’ve spent over $3,000 and seven years trying to get his death certificate,” Sabah said. 

For families of victims buried in mass graves, the pace of exhumations and bureaucratic obstacles prevent them from closure add insult to injury. “My father’s remains were identified recently,” said Shireen Khairo, whose father was killed by ISIS and found in a mass grave in Hardan, Sinjar district. “But we only received half of his skeleton to bury. I can’t describe how painful and tormenting to the soul this process has been.”

Rebwar Ramazan was one year old when his father, grandfather, six of his uncles, and 105 other men from his family were taken, killed, and their bodies placed in an unmarked mass grave in southern Iraq. Rebwar’s family members were part of the 8,000 men from the Barzan area killed in 1983 by Saddam Hussein’s government, which the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal ruled was an act of genocide and crime against humanity. 

In 2019, Ramazan went to Samawa, in southern Iraq, to attend the excavation of a recently discovered mass grave from that era. “My mother told me my father was only wearing one sock when they took him, so I was looking at all the remains for a bone wearing one sock thinking maybe I would find him,” Ramazan said. 

To date, approximately 2,500 remains of Kurds killed between 1980 and 1988 have been recovered from mass graves and returned to the Kurdistan region, Abdullah told Human Rights Watch. 

Exhuming mass graves is critical to ensuring the right to know the truth about gross violations of human rights and ensuring Iraq is able to fulfil its duty to guarantee effective remedies and reparations and conduct effective investigations. Evidence gathered from mass graves can and should also be used in criminal proceedings to ensure perpetrators of crimes are held accountable. 

The Iraqi government should increase efforts to exhume mass graves in Iraq through an impartial approach independent of the identity of the victims and alleged perpetrators. The government should also increase funding for the Mass Graves Directorate and Medico-Legal Directorate, enhancing their capacity for evidence collection, including through digital surveying and crime scene reconstruction, facilities for the storage of biological material, and victim identification processes. 

“Exhuming all of Iraq’s mass graves will require a serious and sustained commitment from Iraqi authorities, and it’s one that must absolutely be made,” Sanbar said. “Healing the wounds of the past won’t be possible without it.”