Iraq
After a break of a week, the Iraq government resumed their series of exam-related shutdowns ordered by government authorities to curb cheating during high school exams period. The shutdowns are expected to continued on July 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 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.
Measurements from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech shows the shutdown on 4 July, the sixth in this series of exam-related shutdowns. It is a similar drop to the previous shutdowns, beginning at 01:00 and ending at 05:00 (UTC).
![Chart from IODA showing outage on July 4](https://pulse.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/iraq-4-july-1024x576.png)
The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) shows that they did not receive any data from any their test probes in Iraq for a longer period of time.
![Chart from OONI showing no data being received from probes in Iraq.](https://pulse.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/iraq-ooni-july4-1024x513.png)
12th grade #exams have started in #Iraq, which means another ~5 hour #Internet #shutdown has occurred in Iraq. 12th grade exams are set for June 21, 22 ,24, 25, 26, 27; July 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15.
Iraq Internet connectivity in near realtime:https://t.co/3SrU04E7e8 pic.twitter.com/Uz9DFhHQI4
— Internet Outage Alerts (@IODA_live) June 21, 2023
- Day Five of Iraq High School Exam-Related Internet Shutdowns [26 June]
- Day Four of Iraq High School Exam-Related Internet Shutdowns [25 June]
- Iraq High School Exam-Related Shutdown Continue [24 June]
- Second Iraq High School Exam-Related Shutdown [22 June]
- Iraq Starts a New Series of Shutdowns [21 June]
- Iraq: Exam-Related Internet Shutdowns Steady But More Expected [17 June]
- Iraq: Sixth Internet Shutdown for Exams [13 June]
- Iraq: Exam-Related Internet Shutdowns Continue Into Third Week [12 June]
- Iraq: Four Exam-Related Internet Shutdowns in the Last Eight Days [8 June]
- Iraq Experiences Third Exam-Related Shutdown For Year [6 June]
- Second Exam-Related Internet Shutdown, Iraq [4 June]
- Despite Cost to Economy, Iraq Imposes Internet Shutdown During Exams [1 June]
- Iraq Ministry of Communication Takes Positive Action Against Shutdowns [22 May]