National shutdown
The government of Iraq is imposing daily Internet shutdowns during the second stage of middle/lower secondary school exams as part of its efforts to reduce cheating. The 3-hour shutdowns affect everyone in Iraq, except those in the Kurdistan region which had its own shutdowns as reported here. As we have repeatedly written about 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. It is the 41st Internet shutdown event in Iraq in 2023.
- Total Duration 3 hours
Iraq
- Population
- 45,074,049
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free
Local impact
The government of Iraq is imposing daily Internet shutdowns during the second stage of middle/lower secondary school exams as part of its efforts to reduce cheating. The 3-hour shutdowns affect everyone in Iraq, except those in the Kurdistan region which had its own shutdowns as reported here. As we have repeatedly written about 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. It is the 41st Internet shutdown event in Iraq in 2023.
Related documentation
| 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 four shutdowns in this series beginning at 01:00 and ending at 04:00 (UTC) on 17, 18, 19, 21, 23 and 25 September.
These results are supported by similar measurements by Cloudflare Radar and Google’s Transparency Report both showing drops in total traffic and traffic to Google-specific sites. Today's shutdown (25 September) is visible on IODA graphs, Cloudflare Radar, and Google Transparency Report, as detailed in the graphs below.
