National shutdown
The people of Iraq have experienced the third 3-hour Internet shutdown this week on 19 September 2023 as per local authorities strategy to impose daily Internet shutdowns during second stage of middle/lower secondary school exams to reduce chetaing. The shutdowns affect everyone in Iraq, except those living in the Kurdistan region which has its own shutdowns as reported here. This is the 40th Internet shutdown in Iraq in 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.
- Total Duration 3 hours
Iraq
- Population
- 46,042,015
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free
Local impact
The people of Iraq have experienced the third 3-hour Internet shutdown this week on 19 September 2023 as per local authorities strategy to impose daily Internet shutdowns during second stage of middle/lower secondary school exams to reduce chetaing. The shutdowns affect everyone in Iraq, except those living in the Kurdistan region which has its own shutdowns as reported here. This is the 40th Internet shutdown in Iraq in 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
Translated
| Day | Exam |
| 17 September 2023 | Islamic Studies and Arabic Language |
| 18 September 2023 | Local Language (Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen) |
| 19 September 2023 | English Language |
| 21 September 2023 | Biology/Economy/History/Art History |
| 23 September 2023 | Mathematics |
| 25 September 2023 | Chemistry/Geography/Science of Beauty |
| 27 September 2023 | Physics/Economy/Environmental Art |
| 28 September 2023 | French/Turkmen Languages |
Other supporting information
Measurements from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech show the third shutdown on 19 September following a similar pattern to the previous shutdowns, beginning at 01:00 and ending at 04:00 (UTC). The shutdown is visible on Cloudflare Radar, IODA graphs, and Google Transparency Report, as detailed in the graphs below.
These results are supported by similar measurements by Cloudflare Radar and Google's Transparency Report showing drops in total traffic and traffic to Google specific sites.
