The Iraqi parliament on Saturday handed a invoice making same-sex relations punishable by as much as 15 years in jail.
Transgender individuals may also be sentenced to 3 years in jail underneath the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution regulation.
The laws was adopted throughout a session attended by 170 out of 329 lawmakers.
A earlier draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations.
However the brand new amendments enable the courts to condemn individuals to between 10 and 15 years in jail.
In addition they set a minimal of a seven-year jail time period for “selling” same-sex relations and a sentence starting from one to 3 years for males who “deliberately” act like ladies.
The amended regulation makes “organic intercourse change based mostly on private need and inclination” against the law and punishes trans individuals and medical doctors who carry out gender reassignment surgical procedure with as much as three years in jail.
