Zakia Ismail Hakki

Zakia Ismael Hakki (; 18 November 1939 – 22 August 2021) was an Iraqi Feyli Kurdish lawyer. She and Sabiha al-Shaykh Da'ud became the first female judges in Iraq respectively in 1956–1959. Hakki fled Iraq in 1996 after her husband was killed and was granted asylum in the United States. She returned to Iraq in 2003 and was elected to the National Assembly of Iraq and was an advisor in the drafting of the constitution.

Early life and education Zakia Hakki was born on 18 November 1939 in Baghdad, to an established Feyli Kurdish family. She graduated from law school in 1957, one of five women in a class of 350. She has a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the International Labor Union in Switzerland and a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Baghdad.

Haqqi advocated for the rights of Kurdish people and women. She was a founding member of the Kurdish Women's Association and became its president in 1958, a post she held till 1975.

In 1959, Hakki was appointed as a judge by Abd al-Karim Qasim,

In 1970, she became the only woman in the leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

During 1970–75, she was the head of Kurdistan Democratic Party. Constant persecution from Saddam Hussein's regime, forced her to move to the United States in 1996, where she worked as a lawyer.

Hakki was a senior official in the ministries of industry and agriculture in the pre-Saddam Hussein period. As Hussein gained power, she joined the Kurdish cause, fighting as a guerrilla until she was arrested and tortured in 1975.

Hakki fled Iraq in 1996, bribing her way out of the country with a valuable carpet. She was a member of the Independents Liberal Politician Iraqi Women Group, speaking out about conditions for women in Hussein's Iraq.

Hakki worked as an attorney in Northern Virginia and was the vice president of the Iraqi-American Council. She supported her son in his fight for asylum in the US after he was accused of being a double agent.

Hakki returned to Iraq in 2003, seeking to put her legal expertise to work in rebuilding the country. She was hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority's interim Ministry of Justice to make recommendations about legal reforms to the Constitution Review Committee. However, neither she nor any other woman was able to participate in the drafting process for the new constitution, debate the constitution publicly or review it before the final draft became public.

In 2004, Hakki was an outspoken opponent against the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council's decision to cancel family laws and place jurisdiction under sharia, saying, "This new law will send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages." When Shiite Islamic parties pushed for sharia to be enshrined in the interim constitution, Hakki used her Department of Defense clearance to bring activists into the Green Zone and staged sit-ins in US proconsul Paul Bremer's office until he agreed to veto sharia. She was an adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Justice in 2004 and 2005. In 2005 she said, "I am thankful America liberated us from Saddam Hussein, but I resent how it has been dealing with Iraqis since then." During the Ba'athist rule in Iraq, Haqqi was placed under house arrest. The then President Saddam Hussein had her husband, brother and cousins killed.