Hakki worked in Baghdad as both a lawyer and judge. In the 1950s, she smuggled documents into the US embassy about the treatment of Kurds in Iraq. Haqqi advocated for the rights of Kurdish people and women. She was a founding member of the
Kurdish Women's Association and became its president in 1958, a post she held till 1975. In 1959, Hakki was appointed as a judge by
Abd al-Karim Qasim, In 1970, she became the only woman in the leadership of the
Kurdistan Democratic Party. Hakki was a senior official in the ministries of industry and agriculture in the
pre-Saddam Hussein period. As Hussein gained power, she joined the Kurdish cause, fighting as a guerrilla until she was arrested and tortured in 1975. Hakki fled Iraq in 1996, bribing her way out of the country with a valuable carpet. She was a member of the Independents Liberal Politician Iraqi Women Group, speaking out about conditions for women in Hussein's Iraq. Hakki worked as an attorney in Northern Virginia and was the vice president of the
Iraqi-American Council. She supported her son in his fight for asylum in the US after he was accused of being a double agent. Hakki returned to Iraq in 2003, seeking to put her legal expertise to work in rebuilding the country. She was hired by the
Coalition Provisional Authority's interim Ministry of Justice to make recommendations about legal reforms to the Constitution Review Committee. However, neither she nor any other woman was able to participate in the drafting process for the new
constitution, debate the constitution publicly or review it before the final draft became public. In 2004, Hakki was an outspoken opponent against the US-backed
Iraqi Governing Council's decision to cancel family laws and place jurisdiction under
sharia, saying, "This new law will send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages." When Shiite Islamic parties pushed for sharia to be enshrined in the interim constitution, Hakki used her Department of Defense clearance to bring activists into the
Green Zone and staged sit-ins in US proconsul
Paul Bremer's office until he agreed to veto sharia. She was an adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Justice in 2004 and 2005. In 2005 she said, "I am thankful America liberated us from Saddam Hussein, but I resent how it has been dealing with Iraqis since then." Hakki won the
January 2005 Iraqi parliamentary election and served on the drafting committee. The same December she was elected to the
Iraqi Council of Representatives and was a member of the Constitutional Review Committee. ==Personal life and death==