Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2024, published 113rd ILC session (2025)

Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) - Iraq (Ratification: 1962)

Articles 1(1) and 2(1) of the Convention. Restrictions on the freedom to resign of persons in the service of the State. The Committee notes with regret that the Government has not provided information in response to the Committee’s previous request. The Government indicates that a report will be prepared upon receipt of the reply of the Ministry of Transport. The Committee recalls that it has been drawing the Government’s attention to the incompatibility of various legislative provisions which restrict the freedom to resign of persons in the service of the State for more than three decades. These provisions are the following:

• section 35 of Civil Service Act No. 24 of 1960, according to which, while any official may apply for resignation to the competent body, the request to resign can be either accepted or rejected, and therefore the service not automatically terminated after the expiration of the notice period;
• section 40(1) and (2) of Act No. 201 of 1975 on civil maritime service, under the terms of which an application to resign filed by a civil officer or seafarer in the merchant navy may be refused and that such refusal is final;
• resolutions Nos 917 of 1988 and 550 of 1989, which establish similar restrictions with regard to various categories of state officials; and
• section 364 of the Penal Code, under which any official or any person entrusted with public office may be punished with imprisonment if their absence from work may result in the paralysis of a public service.

The Committee once again draws the Government’s attention to the fact that statutory provisions preventing employees from terminating their employment (when this employment is of indefinite duration) by means of notice of reasonable length, are incompatible with the Convention. The Committee urges the Government to take the necessary measures to amend the abovementioned provisions, either by eliminating the possibility of rejecting a resignation submitted through notice of reasonable length, or by limiting provisions preventing workers from leaving their employment to situations of emergency.

Article 2(c). Obligation to work as a consequence of a conviction in a court of law. Following its previous comments on compulsory prison labour for detainees sentenced to imprisonment, the Committee notes the Government’s information that the Prisoners and Detainees Reform Act No. 14, 2018, is the legal framework that authorises the employment of convicted prisoners. While section 22 of the Act authorizes prisoners’ work inside the correctional facility, section 23 authorizes the employment of prisoners over the age of 15 outside the correctional facility, only through contracts concluded with government bodies that require such employment. The Government indicates that there is no legal basis for the employment of convicted prisoners in private entities.