Property
Registered title, restricted foreign ownership, and unresolved displacement claims
Title is registered with the Real Estate Registration Directorate under the Civil Code and the 1971 registration law. Foreign ownership of land is tightly restricted, and property claims arising from displacement remain a major unresolved issue.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Federal, with the Kurdistan Region administering its own registry.
Governing law
- Civil Code No. 40 of 1951
- Real Estate Registration Law No. 43 of 1971
- Law No. 2 of 2006 on the Property Claims Commission
In practice
The Civil Code of 1951, drafted under the influence of Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri, is one of the most admired codifications in the Arab world and blends French technique with Islamic law and the Ottoman Mejelle. Registration is constitutive. Foreign natural persons generally cannot own land, with narrow reciprocity exceptions. The Property Claims Commission handles confiscations and forced displacements from 1968 onward, and successive waves of displacement since 2003 and 2014 have generated a very large backlog of competing claims, secondary occupation and destroyed records that the formal register cannot resolve on its own.