Incest in Iraq and the Legal View of the Act

Abstract

Objective: Shedding light on the dimensions of the crime of incest to contribute to developing solutions to combat this type of crime before it becomes a widespread phenomenon in society. Incest causes great harm to the individual and leads to an insult to the family entity with the consequent imbalance in the social structure.   Methodology: A descriptive and analytical study of a phenomenon that remained silent in a society. This article reviews the problem of incest, its impact on an important aspect of people's lives, and the most important factor in the disintegration of the family and the insult to its dignity. Highlighting the definition of the problem, explaining the reasons for falling into it, explaining the preventive means and its treatment, the legislative philosophy of a group of Arab countries, with some cases existing in society, all of which would contribute to reaching success.   Result and discussion: The law criminalized the perpetrator of this crime by setting punitive laws against the perpetrators and placing it in the category of crimes against public morals. However, most of the perpetrators of these crimes do not receive the necessary and deterrent punishment because they hide for fear of scandal, shame and stigmatization of society. Society may unconsciously contribute to these crimes, by stigmatizing the victim socially and blaming her for what happened to her, making the matter of complaining or revealing the truth about these deviations very difficult.   Conclusions: These issues must be addressed socially, by imposing the law and passing deterrent laws, to get rid of these phenomena that destroy society. The need to enact new legislation or amend existing legislation is represented in the Penal Code No. 111 of 1969. In Articles 393/2b, Article 369 Paragraph 2, and Article 397, the law stipulates that incest crimes are considered criminal offenses like all other crimes. Without allocating a specific chapter for them, and that the law added only two years or more to the punishment, and this is considered a defective treatment of a sensitive and serious.