Article 27 Notarised Undertaking and Red-Wax Sealing for Early Release

1. Key takeaways

Yes, it exists. Article 27 of Public Health Law No. 89 of 1981 allows the Directorate of Public Health Prevention, as an exception, to let goods under laboratory testing leave customs custody before the health certificate is issued to their owners, provided three conditions are satisfied together: an undertaking not to dispose of the goods, authenticated by a notary; storage under the direct supervision of the competent authority; and red-wax sealing of the storage premises, until the laboratory result is issued. This is not an official’s case-by-case discretion but an alternative release mechanism written into statute. For companies, its significance is that Iraq’s detain–seal–release sequence has a complete legal parent, and any sealing demand going beyond these three conditions can be met with a request to cite the legal basis.

• The three statutory conditions are a notarised no-disposal undertaking, storage under direct official supervision, and red-wax sealing of the storage place.
• All three must be satisfied together and last until the laboratory result appears.
• Early release exists only within the scope of Article 26 laboratory testing; it cannot be invoked freely.

2. Legal basis

Source level: primary source, verified. — https://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/irq149622.pdf

Excerpts of the provision:

• Article 27 grants the Directorate of Public Health Prevention the power to approve, as an exception, the removal of goods subject to laboratory examination from customs custody before the health certificate is granted to their owners, against an undertaking not to dispose of them, authenticated by a notary, with the goods stored under the direct supervision of the competent authority and the storage place sealed with red wax, until the result of the laboratory examination appears.

3. Expert insights

Insight 1 | GRZAN has not seen a second example, across Middle East jurisdictions, of legislation written to the granularity of red wax. Most jurisdictions leave the handling of goods after sampling to customs operating rules or internal departmental guidance; what material the seal is made of and who applies it are execution-level details. Iraq wrote the form of the undertaking, the supervising body and the sealing method into Article 27 together, which amounts to setting statutory constitutive elements for early release. The direct effect is that the authority may say yes or no to a release, but once Article 27 applies, the entire sequence — notarised undertaking, officially supervised storage and red-wax sealing — must be carried out, and the procedure cannot be simplified.

Insight 2 | Notary authentication brings a third-party resource into the process. The notary belongs neither to the health system nor to customs. Requiring the undertaking to be authenticated by a notary means that a company applying for early release must mobilise an additional judicial-administrative resource, which lengthens processing time and generates extra cost. This also explains why early release is not used frequently in Iraqi practice — it is not a cost-free option. Practical estimate: companies should confirm in advance whether a notary channel able to act immediately exists at the importer’s location (no official provision found).

Insight 3 | Horizontal comparison: medicines have a legal parent provision; devices have no corresponding clause anywhere in this fully obtained code. Article 27 attaches to the scope of application of Article 26: only goods subject to laboratory examination under Article 26 can invoke it. Medicines and medical preparations fall clearly within the reach of Article 26 and therefore enjoy this statutory release channel; medical devices are not within the named scope of Article 26 (see article 41 of this series), so there is no question of invoking Article 27 to claim early release for them. This is a textbook example of scope propagating within a single law: a procedurally neutral clause is in fact available only to particular product categories.

Insight 4 | Falsification check: the claim that Iraq can release goods freely and that personal connections suffice to pick up detained cargo does not hold. The circulating story is that port operations in Iraq are highly flexible and that, with the right contacts, detained goods can be extracted. For the situations covered by Article 27, the law fixes the prerequisites: without a notarised undertaking, without a warehouse under official supervision, without red-wax sealing, early release has no textual basis. Conversely, if someone demands an expediting release fee on grounds outside Article 27, the company should require written legal authority — and if none is produced, treat the demand as unfounded.

Insight 5 | Article 27 conversely defines the lawful boundary of detention. The provision makes awaiting the laboratory result the terminal state of the early-release period, which shows that the legality of detention rests on the examination being in progress. If goods have been detained but never sent for testing, or the result was issued long ago while release is still withheld, that state has gone beyond the authorisation of Article 27. This is the argument GRZAN uses most often when handling detention disputes.

4. Practical recommendations

• When handling port detention incidents, GRZAN’s first step is to require the other party to state in writing the article on which the detention is based and the examination reference number, and to verify whether the goods have actually entered the Article 26 examination procedure.
• If early release is to be sought under Article 27, the notarised no-disposal undertaking text must be prepared in advance and its format confirmed with the receiving party. Practical estimate: undertakings issued abroad normally need to be provided in Arabic or in a bilingual Arabic-English version (no official provision found).
• Confirm with the warehouse operator whether it can accept direct supervision by the competent authority and be sealed with red wax. Where an ordinary bonded warehouse cannot meet these conditions, an application under Article 27 will not be accepted in practice.
• Tender documents and agency agreements should provide in advance who bears warehousing costs arising while awaiting examination, and whether the notarisation and supervision costs under Article 27 fall on the importer or the supplier.
• Where payment demands are raised in the name of expediting fees or release coordination fees, GRZAN requires clients to ask for written Arabic legal authority and an official fiscal receipt in every case, and to refuse payment where neither is provided.

5. Verification checklist

• □ Check the current wording of the two key expressions in Article 27 of the gazette full text: the notary and the red wax.
• □ Confirm whether the successive amendments (Nos. 53 / 71 / 54 / 20) touch Article 27.
• □ Obtain from the local customs broker sample documents for early release, including the undertaking template and the name of the authority accepting the notarisation.
• □ Verify whether the warehouse intended for use is recognised by the competent authority as a premises acceptable for storage under official supervision.
• □ Search in Arabic for later Ministry of Health instructions and confirm whether sealing and undertaking operations have been further detailed.
• □ Re-check whether the official documents cited in this article have been replaced by later directives or resolutions (verification baseline of this article: 29 October 2026).

Regulatory information verified to 29 October 2026.

How GRZAN can help. GRZAN provides medical device and IVD registration, quality system, authorised representative and local testing support for the Iraqi market. Our team manages adverse event reporting and recall coordination, and supports post-market vigilance obligations. Business enquiries: info@grzanglobal.com