The Political Prisoners Welfare Fund: what was established in 2025?
Among the changes made by Law No. 10 of 2025 was the creation of a fund called the Political Prisoners Welfare Fund. The article What the second amendment changed surveys the amendment as a whole. This article stays with the fund alone: its personality, its objects, where its resources come from, and what should not be read into it.
The text sets a percentage as a cap on the subscription, rather than a standing cash amount.
Personality and administration
The law added to Article 7 of Political Prisoners Foundation Law No. 4 of 2006 a rule establishing the fund. It has legal personality and financial and administrative independence, and is represented by a director-general of the fund or a person authorised by the director-general. The fund has a board of administration chaired by the head of the Foundation, with the directors-general as members. The head of the Foundation issues instructions fixing the fund's competences, the duties of the director and of the board and the holding of its meetings, and the fund's formations, divisions and affiliations.
It is not a sub-account without a legal personality, and it is not a substitute for the Special Committee or the Appeals Body. Coverage and appeal decisions remain on the path explained in Who is covered and Appeals. The fund is a later welfare instrument for persons whose coverage has been established, or whom the text targets among covered persons, under the instructions issued by the head of the Foundation.
What is the fund intended to do?
The text aims to provide care for persons covered by the law by growing the fund's assets through participation in investment and development activities in all fields. It is to provide opportunities for covered persons by establishing or financing projects, granting loans and advances, financing their housing projects or the purchase of housing units, and financing social, health, treatment and education programmes and any other activities.
To grow its resources, the text allows the fund to conclude project contracts and to invest returns in fields it lists, including real estate, industry, health, commerce, education, tourism, agriculture, electricity, energy, information technology and banking, and to purchase possessory rights in real property and land, to lend and to borrow, to conclude partnership contracts with the private sector, and to pursue any other activity or project to grow its finances, for the purpose of providing assistance and facilities to persons covered by the law.
These are broad powers on the face of the text. Their exercise is tied to the instructions of the head of the Foundation and to the proper handling of the fund's assets, so that any programme, loan or housing project is read from those instructions and from the fund’s statutory objects once coverage is established.
Where do the resources come from?
The fund's financial resources consist of:
- monthly subscription contributions from all persons covered by the Foundation law, at a rate of not more than 2 per cent of the pension salary and the financial grants under this law;
- returns from investing the fund's assets;
- gifts, donations and presents made to the fund;
- fees for services the Foundation provides to covered persons.
The cap on the percentage is stated because it is a legal limit, not because it is a cash amount. How the deduction is made, when it starts, and any exemption, if one exists, are read from the instructions of the head of the Foundation once they are issued. A person who disputes a deduction, or a paid service, reviews those instructions and the coverage decision, not a public announcement alone.
The salary itself is paid through the National Pension Authority under Article 17, as explained in The political prisoner's salary. The fund's subscription is calculated from that salary or from the grants, at a rate not exceeding the cap. It is a later deduction from an entitlement, not a substitute for it.
What should not be confused with the fund?
The fund does not confer the status of a political prisoner or detainee. It does not extend an appeal period. It does not replace the plot of land or the housing unit provided for in Article 18 as amended in 2025, even if the fund may finance housing projects or the purchase of units within its objects. It is not treated as a general pension fund for State employees; its title is the care of persons covered by the Foundation law.
A person who wants a full picture of the amendment — the Reconsideration Committee, transfer of the salary, and coverage in the Kurdistan Region — should return to the article on Law No. 10 of 2025, so that those rules are not all attributed to the fund.
How is the fund read alongside land and salary?
Article 18, as amended in 2025, gives covered persons or their heirs a residential plot, a cash equivalent or a housing unit, and provides that obtaining land under this law does not prevent benefiting from land or a unit under other laws. The care fund may finance housing or the purchase of a unit within its objects, but that financing does not cancel the Article 18 allocation and does not replace the Foundation’s decision on the alternatives. A person asking about both land and the fund should keep them apart: the first is a legal entitlement under Article 18; the second is a service or financing that may be available under the fund’s instructions once coverage is established.
As for the salary, its continuation, suspension and transfer to the family after death are governed by Articles 17 and 22, not by the fund’s rules. A subscription of no more than 2% does not turn the salary into a fund grant, and does not justify delay in payment by the National Pension Authority. If payment of the salary is delayed, the route is to review the coverage decision and the payment details, as in the salary page and Pension batches.
What should be kept on file where the fund is concerned?
Keep the coverage decision, proof of receipt of the salary or grant where the subscription needs to be calculated, any instructions or form issued by the head of the Foundation or by the fund’s management, and any loan or housing contract if one was concluded. A dispute over a term in a contract with the fund is read with the instructions and the relevant civil rules, after confirming the capacity of the contracting party and that the obligation falls within the fund’s stated objects.
Legal basis and sources
- Law No. 10 of 2025, the Second Amendment to Political Prisoners Foundation Law No. 4 of 2006 (Al-Waqa’i Al-Iraqiya No. 4841 of 22/9/2025) — Article 1
- Political Prisoners Foundation Law No. 4 of 2006
Frequently asked questions
Is the fund a substitute for the political prisoner's salary?
No. The salary is the rule in Article 17. The fund is an instrument of care, investment, lending, housing and programmes, financed in part by a subscription of not more than 2 per cent.
Who administers the fund?
A director-general represents it, and a board chaired by the head of the Foundation, with the directors-general as members, under instructions issued by the head of the Foundation.
Is the subscription compulsory for every covered person?
The text makes monthly subscription contributions from “all covered persons” a resource of the fund, at a rate of not more than 2 per cent. The detail of the deduction is read from the instructions when they are applied.
Does a person apply to the fund in the same way as for coverage?
A coverage application remains before the Special Committee. Loans or programmes the fund may offer are organised by its instructions. No standing form was matched in this article.