The War on Women in Iraq

Between 1999 and March of 2003, in Iraq there were 22 attacks on women and one death where the victims were attacked for not wearing the traditional headscarves and veils. That’s before the U.S. invasion.

According to the Women’s Rights Association (WRA), a local NGO in Baghdad, the number of attacks has trippled; there have been 80 attacks to date against women and reports of four women being killed by their families in 2005.

“It’s difficult to say how many women wear headscarves and veils,” [WRA spokeswoman Mayada] Zuhair added. “But, before 2003, roughly, seven out of 10 were wearing scarves and coverings, whereas now, four in 10 do.”

The three recent deaths happened in and around the capital, according to Zuhair. Two of them were single girls found walking in local markets without the covering, while the other two were married women who had abandoned their scarves and veils after marriage at the request of their husbands, Zuhair explained. [“IRAQ:Women attacked headscarves, NGO says” (Reuters.com)]

It’s hard to believe there’s that much fuss over what someone chooses to wear or not to wear. What’s worse is that this violence against women is not really considered violence against women. The Iraqi Penal Code actually allows for abuses against women; it states that “the penalty for killing a woman should be reduced if a crime was committed for reasons of honour”. A so-called “honour killing” is where a woman’s relative kills her for supposedly bringing perceived dishonour on the family. Not wearing the veils and head dress can be considered just such a dishonour.

Police won’t get involved because they say it’s family religious business. Women are being murdered by their own relatives for expressing their own independence or even for obeying their husband’s desires for them to step forward into the 21rst Century.

Rahman Ala’a, a senior official in the interior ministry, blamed the constitution for not setting down women’s rights more clearly. “For the police to interfere in women’s rights issues, we need to have it well explained in the constitution, which at present doesn’t address such issues,” he said.

Zuhair concluded that the challenge was therefore left to Iraqi women to assert their rights for themselves.[“IRAQ:Women attacked headscarves, NGO says” (Reuters.com)]

tags: Iraq, Women's Rights, Honor Killings

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