Justifications for criminal protection of agricultural land ownership in Iraqi legislation.

Agricultural land holds significant importance and has a clear impact on the national economy as a natural resource that cannot be dispensed with, being linked to people's lives and the interests of society, in addition to its effective contribution to the stability of the state and its sovereignty. After the development of the state's role and its intervention in social, economic, and political life, crime has ceased to be merely a personal act with limited effects; rather, it has come to represent an assault on economic interests in society—those critical interests that are essential for the survival and continuity of society. The role of criminal law is no longer a conventional one, but has become more concerned with and linked to the primary interests of society in light of contemporary penal policy, serving as an effective tool in protecting these interests by curbing the motivations for criminal behavior harmful to the interests of society. To achieve this, the legislator must resort to criminal provisions to penalize any act that harms the economic system in the agricultural sector, imposing appropriate punitive measures on the offender. In Iraq, agricultural land continues to be subjected to a variety of trespasses and violations that justify the need for criminal protection. Among the most prominent of these justifications is the protection of agricultural production (state assets) and the safeguarding of. And protecting agricultural property from fragmentation as well as protecting it from random (illegal) construction, which has become one of the very difficult problems facing the shrinking agricultural area in Iraq. Moreover, the civil protection available in Iraqi civil legislation and agricultural laws remains insufficient to provide the necessary protection for agricultural land ownership, which makes the intervention of criminal law a necessary requirement to complete the picture of the protection needed for these lands from both civil and criminal perspectives.