Zakia Hakki, who lived from November 18, 1939, to August 22, 2021, was an Iraqi Feyli Kurdish lawyer born in Baghdad. She and Sabiha al-Shaykh Da'ud became Iraq's first female judges, appointed in the years 1956 to 1959. After her husband was killed by operatives of Saddam Hussein's government, she fled Iraq in 1996, reportedly bribing officials with a valuable carpet to do so, and was granted political asylum in the United States, where she practiced law in Northern Virginia and served as vice president of the Iraqi-American Council. She returned to Iraq in 2003, was elected to the interim parliament, and advised the Coalition Provisional Authority's interim Ministry of Justice on legal reforms, though neither she nor any other woman was able to take part in drafting the new Iraqi constitution; she later won election to the Iraqi Council of Representatives and served on its Constitutional Review Committee. She died in Harrisonburg, Virginia, at the age of 81.
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