About: Agrarian Reform Law of 1970

The Iraqi Agrarian Reform Law No. 117 of 1970 was a law that sought to remove control of land owned by the traditional rural elites and redistribute it to peasant families under the Ba'th Party of Saddam Hussein. The law is broken into 52 articles providing different institutions that enforce the law, as well as defining the various types of land to be redistributed, and how much is to be redistributed. Although there were land reform laws passed before, the 1970 Agrarian Land Reform Law took it further. This law reduced the maximum amount of holdings of land to between 10 and 150 hectares (1 hectare= 2.471 acres) of irrigated land and to between 250 and 500 hectares of non-irrigated land. The government also reserved the right to lower the holding ceiling and to get rid of old and new lan