National shutdown
Internet Services
- Total Duration 4 hours
Iraq
- Population
- 47,020,774
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free
Local impact
Iraq has again experienced an exam-related Internet shutdown, the fifth such scheduled shutdown by the government since 1 June 2023. As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society and are in our opinion NOT the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating.Related documentation
Local news programs indicated that the Iraq Ministry of Education announced the shutdown.
Below is a screenshot of the Iraq Primary School exam schedule happening in June 2023 as per the Iraqi Ministry of Education page on Facebook.
Other supporting information
IODA measurements show a drop in Internet connectivity in Iraq beginning around 1:00 UTC and resuming around 5:30 UTC. You can also see the previous three of the five previous shutdowns that have happened since 1 June.
Cloudflare Radar shows the start of the outage, along with the three previous exam-related outages since 1 June.
