The Iraqi population is predominantly Muslim: 64–69 percent are Shi’a Muslim and 29–34 percent are Sunni Muslim. The Shi’a Muslim population resides predominantly in the south and eastern regions of the country, whereas the Sunnis live in the west, center, and north of the country. There are also about 200,000 Christians from various denominations, including Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, mainly located in the Nineveh Plains in the north. However, that population has drastically declined since 2003, when Iraqi Christians were estimated to number 1.5 million. Iraq is also home to almost 700,000 Yazidis, who remained largely internally displaced, as well as about 150,000 Kaka’is, also known as the Yarsan or Ahl al-Haq; these two communities are mainly spread across the north. Finally, a tiny Jewish community continues to reside in Baghdad and Erbil. The Struggle of Religious Minorities in Northern Iraq Six years after fleeing the ISIS genocide, the Yazidi community continued to face severe challenges to reclaiming its homeland along with its religious and ethnic identity. The whereabouts of thousands of kidnapped Yazidi women, girls, and boys remain unknown. Despite joint efforts between the KRG and the IFG to locate abductees and reunite them with their families, few were able to return to their homes in 2020. Around 2,800 abducted Yazidis were still missing, many of them reportedly still trafficked into sex, labor, or terrorism. Furthermore, many ISIS fighters responsible for those atrocities remain at large despite Yazidi demands for accountability. The 2020 United Nations (UN) Security Council renewal of the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by ISIS, which continued to document atrocities and uncover mass graves throughout the year, offered some hope. Despite international development efforts by the U.S. government to improve living conditions for religious and ethnic minorities in northern Iraq, significant obstacles remained in 2020. The presence of armed groups and checkpoints in and around Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains, particularly from Iranian-backed PMF factions, have prevented religious and ethnic minorities from returning to their communities of origin. At checkpoints, PMF fighters demanded that IDPs and refugees, especially religious minorities, pay excessive amounts of money to cross or risk being sent back to the camps. As a result of these and other repressive practices, less than 50 percent of the population of displaced Christians have been able to return to their homes since ISIS was defeated in 2017. Tens of thousands from that community remained in IDP and refugee camps under difficult and inhumane conditions. Christians who managed to return to their communities also faced new challenges, including a lack of basic services, dire economic conditions, and stolen properties. Security Challenges in Northern Iraq The continued presence of competing armed factions, backed by different regional players with varying interests in northern Iraq, represented a challenge to improved security in 2020. The Sinjar Security Agreement, signed in October, was aimed at reducing tensions between the KRG and the IFG that contributed to the security problems in northern Iraq. However, it was widely criticized for failing to address concerns of the Yazidis—Sinjar’s most vulnerable and traumatized community. For example, the agreement allowed the KRG to appoint a mayor in Sinjar without involving and consulting Yazidi locals. Religious minorities continued to fear that the KRG and IFG’s failure to agree on security measures for disputed areas opened the opportunity for ISIS to reemerge in areas with significant minority populations. For example, in April 2020, the Iraqi government raided a home in Hawija, Kirkuk, where dozens of ISIS members were hiding. Additionally, Turkish airstrikes in northern Iraq represented another security challenge as ongoing military operations further destabilized already vulnerable Yazidi areas in Sinjar. Other Religious Freedom Issues in Iraq In 2020, religious freedom conditions in the KRG territory remained relatively consistent with the prior year, although the regional government created the new Ministry of Minority Affairs to advance the rights of both religious and ethnic minorities. Moreover, the KRG continued to host hundreds of thousands of IDPs who fled in prior years from ISIS territory—mainly from Yazidi, Christian, Turkmen, and Shabak communities. A lack of security for these communities in and along disputed areas persisted throughout the year. Religious freedom conditions in Iraq, apart from northern Iraq, remained poor. Although Sunni-Shi’a Muslim reconciliation efforts continued, there was reportedly little progress. The IFG refused to remove blasphemy and apostasy laws and continued to deny formal recognition of religious minority and nontheist groups, including Baha’is, Jehovah’s Witnesses, humanists, Kaka’is and others. Finally, the “de-Ba’athification” process, which was adopted to remove Baath party officials from the government post-2003 and has since remained a fixture in Iraqi law, continued to provide a basis for discrimination against Sunni Muslims. Key U.S. Policy In 2020, the U.S. government maintained support for ethnic and religious minority groups to recover and rebuild their communities through financial and programmatic support as well as civic and political engagement. Since the defeat of ISIS in 2017, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has spent over $438 million to help with reconstruction efforts in Iraq, including $38 million in 2020 alone. In addition, the U.S. government provided the Iraqi government with $60 million to help combat the spread of COVID-19. The U.S. government also enacted punitive measures against individuals responsible for human rights violations; for example, in January 2021, immediately after the reporting period, the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed Global Magnitsky sanctions on PMF Chairman and Iraq’s former National Security Advisor Falih al-Fayyadh for engaging in egregious human rights abuses. U.S. government officials in Bagdad, Erbil, and Washington, DC, continued to raise religious freedom issues through bilateral engagement with their Iraqi counterparts. U S C I R F – R E C O M M E N D E D F O R S P E C I A L W AT C H L I S T 75 IRAQ Background