The College of law of the University of Baghdad, in the branch of criminal law, discussed a PHD thesis for the student (Kawlijin Ali Akbar Darwish), entitled “The Privacy of Criminal Protection for Minors – A Comparative Study”, on Wednesday, October 11, 2023, in the conference hall of the college.
The thesis aims to shed light on the rights of minors as a category of society that is no less important than any other category, and to focus on them at the internal and international levels and provide protection and care for them.
The thesis included three chapters. The first chapter discussed the definition of criminal protection for minors, and the second chapter addressed the objective applications of criminal protection for minors. As for the third chapter, it dealt with the privacy of procedural criminal treatment for minors.
The thesis included several recommendations, the most important of which is amending Article (381) of the Iraqi Penal Code as follows: “Anyone who kidnaps a child from those who have legal authority over him, or conceals him, or substitutes him with another or falsely attributes him to someone other than his mother, shall be punished with imprisonment.” The punishment for the crime of enticing a minor to beg should be imprisonment along with a fine. The Iraqi legislator is also called upon to criminalize female circumcision or the request for female circumcision, as the Egyptian legislator has done, due to the harm this act causes to the physical, mental, and psychological well-being of minors.
