MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) — Married for over a decade, Alia Abdel-Razak is one of a million Iraqis deprived of crucial civil status documents, often caught in legal limbo in a country paralyzed by bureaucracy and the ravages of war.

The 37-year-old has to overcome countless hurdles just to get her children into school, and she cannot register her family to obtain the food subsidies she and her husband so desperately need.

A mother of four, Abdel-Razak relies on a pro-bono lawyer from aid group the International Rescue Committee to help her navigate the labyrinthine processes required to get her papers in order.

Like many others, she struggles with endless red tape — but also the fallout from the country's grueling battle to defeat the Islamic State group — to obtain documents like marriage and birth certificates.

"I don't have the means, lawyers want $300 to 500. Where can I get this money when I don't even have enough to eat?" she told AFP.

She was married in 2012 and gave birth to her first daughter a year later.

But in 2014, IS seized Mosul and declared it the capital of its "caliphate," driving out local officials in favor of their own administration.

According to the United Nations, one million Iraqis are living with at least one missing civil status document in a country still struggling to recover five years on from IS' defeat back in 2017.

Marriage contracts agreed under the jihadist group's rule have yet to be recognized, along with the children born out of these unions.

On top of that, many of the civil bureaus that kept such documentation on record were destroyed when IS rose to power or in the years-long battle to drive the jihadists out, according to the spokesperson for the Ministry of Migration and Displaced Persons.

In cooperation with the interior ministry, his ministry coordinates mobile missions in camps to allow displaced people to obtain their missing documents, Ali Jahangir said.