ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iraq’s electoral law must be amended to safeguard proper representation for the Christian community, President Masoud Barzani said on Wednesday, echoing the longstanding calls of various Assyrian and Chaldean Christian movements in Iraq.

Iraq’s Assyrian and Chaldean Christians have long decried the abuse of their quota seats by larger, more established parties. Five seats in the federal parliament are allocated for the country’s dwindling Christian community, but independent representation remains minimal. 

The community has long called for a special electoral law to restrict voting for the quota seats exclusively to Iraqi Christians – a special voting status. According to the current law, all Iraqis across the country can vote for a Christian quota candidate, rendering their seats easily exploitable by larger parties, most infamously the Iran-backed Babylon Movement. 

In a meeting with Steven Fagin, charge d’affaires of the US Embassy in Iraq, President Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), reaffirmed his backing for the Christian community “based on mutual respect, constitutional rights, and partnership, asserting that the community should determine its own destiny.”

Barzani "highlighted the importance of amending the election law to ensure that the Christian community can exercise its own free will, preventing others from making decisions on their behalf,” a statement from his office said. 

The Babylon Movement, an Iran-backed nominally Christian party and militia that is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has long been accused of winning its parliamentary seats by amassing hundreds of thousands of Shiites from southern provinces to vote for their candidates – which run under the legislature’s five quota seats for Christians. 

Rayan al-Kildani, leader of the Babylon Movement, is pressuring Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to keep hold of the Ministry of Migration and Displacement, which has been held by Iraq’s Assyrian and Chaldean Christians since 2020. 

READ MORE: Iran-backed party lobbying PM Zaidi to retain migration ministry: Christian alliance

Iraq’s Christian community has been devastated over the past decades, with sectarian violence following the US-led invasion of 2003 prompting followers of the country’s Christian denominations to flee. Attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 pushed a greater number toward exodus. 

Fewer than 300,000 Christians remain in Iraq today, a drastic fall from the nearly 1.5 million before 2003, according to data obtained by The New Region from Erbil’s Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda. 

The lack of fair and equal representation in the Iraqi parliament and government positions has pushed even greater numbers of Christians to flee.