Zakia Ismael Hakki (Arabic: زكية إسماعيل حقي; 18 November 1939 – 22 August 2021) was an Iraqi Feyli Kurdish lawyer.
Zakia Hakki was born on 18 November 1939 in Baghdad, to an established Feyli Kurdish family.
She was a founding member of the Kurdish Women's Association and became its president in 1958, a post she held till 1975.
Constant persecution from Saddam Hussein's regime, forced her to move to the United States in 1996, where she worked as a lawyer.
[11] As Hussein gained power, she joined the Kurdish cause, fighting as a guerrilla until she was arrested and tortured in 1975.
[3] She survived numerous assassination attempts[8] and her husband and brother were killed by Hussein's people for speaking out against the regime's policies.
[14] Hakki worked as an attorney in Northern Virginia and was the vice president of the Iraqi-American Council.
[16][17] She was hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority's interim Ministry of Justice to make recommendations about legal reforms to the Constitution Review Committee.
"[19][20] 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.