Ensuring All Iraqis with Disabilities Are Able to Vote

Parliamentary elections will be held in Iraq next week, but many people with disabilities will in fact be denied the right to vote due to discriminatory laws and inaccessible polling stations.

Iraq, plagued by decades of violence and war, has one of the world’s largest populations of people with disabilities.

In the run-up to the election, Human Rights Watch is calling on Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) to improve access to polling stations for people with disabilities, and the IHEC is one of the few institutions in Iraq that is seriously addressing our concerns and research . Hours after our campaign was published, the IHEC spokesman announced that he had ordered people with disabilities to have access to transport on election day. Some people with physical disabilities face obstacles in reaching the polling stations because the government normally bans cars on the streets for safety reasons on election day. The IHEC has also started posting informational videos with sign translation and said it is providing training for people with disabilities on elections.

At the end of September, we were informed that the IHEC would ask the Supreme Election Security Committee to issue special permits for vehicles for people with disabilities on election day. The commission asked polling stations to ensure physical accessibility and announced that they would put ballot boxes on the ground floor of schools. It also said it was setting up a hotline so that people faced with obstacles while voting could report their experiences.

Unfortunately, the commission did not respond to other recommendations made by Human Rights Watch. It said it could not hire people with disabilities to work at polling stations, claiming the tasks involved were too “physically demanding” to perpetuate the stigma of people with disabilities. She said she could not consider forms of early or alternative voting for people with disabilities (although other groups in Iraq can vote earlier) or print ballot papers in Braille.

The Commission has yet to announce which polling stations are now physically accessible, which is key to encouraging some people with disabilities to make an effort to reach them.

While more is needed, the IHEC’s positive pledges in these elections represent significant progress and should pave the way to ensure that the next time Iraqis vote, any disabled person who chooses to vote does so can.