Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa - Iraq

Population: 24,200,000
GDP Per Capita (PPP): N/A
Economy: Transitional
Ranking on UN HDI: N/A
Polity: Transitional
Literacy: Male 55.9% / Female 24.4%
Percent Women Economically Active: N/A
Date of Women's Suffrage: 1980
Women's Fertility Rate: 5.4
Percent Urban/Rural: Urban 68% / Rural 32%

COUNTRY RATINGS FOR IRAQ

Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice: 2.7
Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person: 2.6
Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity: 2.8
Political Rights and Civic Voice: 2.2
Social and Cultural Rights: 2.1

(Scale of 1 to 5: 1 represents the lowest and 5 the highest level of freedom women have to exercise their rights)

INTRODUCTION

Editor's note: This survey assesses developments up until December 31, 2003. It therefore does not include 2004 events, when insurgency and violence dominated certain areas of Iraq. Nevertheless, in the Sunni-majority sections of Iraq, developments in 2004 represented a continuation of trends from the previous year.

Formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq was established as a League of Nations mandate in 1921 and gained formal independence in 1932. In 1958, a military coup toppled the British-installed Hashemite monarchy, and Iraq was declared a republic. A series of military coups ensued, until the Ba'ath Party assumed power in 1968 under the leadership of Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. Al-Bakr resigned from the presidency in 1979 in favor of Saddam Hussein, the Ba'athist regime's de facto strong man. A ruthless dictator and a shrewd politician, Saddam managed to embroil Iraq in a series of disastrous wars that exhausted and traumatized the Iraqi people and ruined their country.

The year 2003 was a watershed in the modern history of Iraq. The military occupation of Iraq by a United States-led coalition in March of 2003 brought a sudden end to 35 years of the Ba'ath regime and 25 years of Saddam Hussein's dictatorial rule. It also brought chaos, political instability, and insecurity to a country reeling from 20 years of wars and 12 years of severe economic sanctions that were imposed by the UN Security Council following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The state of chaos continues today, as Iraq is scheduled to hold national and provincial elections in 2005, which will lead to the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution by the new assembly.

Given this context and the continually evolving developments in Iraq, the assessment of women's rights can only be tentative and contingent. This is most true in the key area of laws and legislation. For example, in May 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) suspended the Iraqi constitution of 1970. The CPA, which was established one month after U.S. and coalition forces took control of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, was created with the aims of restoring conditions of security and stability, of enabling Iraqi people to fully determine their own political future, and of facilitating economic recovery, sustainable reconstruction, and development. On May 6, 2003, U.S. President George Bush appointed Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III as a special envoy and civil administrator of Iraq and head of the CPA. In essence, Ambassador Bremer, who reported directly to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was the de facto ruler of Iraq. But whereas the Iraqi constitution was suspended, the Iraq Civil Code of 1953 and all other state laws and decrees remained valid unless Ambassador Bremer specifically repealed them. Needless to say, this state of affairs, in which people did not know which laws were in effect and which had been abrogated by the CPA, was a major source of confusion.

Iraq's population was an estimated 24,200,000 in 2003, with Arabs comprising 75 percent to 80 percent of the population, Kurds 15 percent to 20 percent, and additional ethnic groups such as Turkmen and Assyrians constituting the remaining 5 percent. Iraq's Sunni Muslims, who constitute about 35 percent of the population, are made up of Sunni Kurds, Sunni Arabs (who dominated political and economic life under the Ba'ath Party), and a small number of Sunni Turkmen. Shi'a Muslims, on the other hand, who comprise around 60 percent of the population, were marginalized and often severely persecuted under the old regime. Iraq's economy was always dominated by the oil sector; however, the military occupation in March 2003 and the sabotage of pipelines that followed, resulted in the shutdown of much of the central economic administrative structure. Unemployment soared as a result of the CPA's early de-Baathification decrees, which left around 35,000 civil servants out of work and disbanded Iraq's 400,000-man army.

Until the mid-1980s, women were guaranteed equal access to education and employment opportunities under the Ba'ath regime; Iraqi women achieved significant strides in the political, economic, and educational spheres. The Iraq-Iran war, the Kuwait war, and the economic sanctions imposed by the UN on Iraq in the early 1990s, however, severely affected the educational and economic status of women. Today, women suffer from high rates of illiteracy and unemployment. In 2003, illiteracy rates reached 75.6 percent for women and 44.1 percent for men.

While women's abilities to organize and advocate for their rights and for greater representation increased with the fall of Saddam's regime, women's freedom of movement and personal security have been limited by the state of lawlessness and insecurity that has accompanied the 2003 U.S. military occupation. In addition, many women's groups and human rights activists are concerned that conservative Islamists may act to rescind or abolish Iraq's relatively progressive Personal Status Law and replace it with a fundamentalist version of Shari'a law, thus increasing discrimination against women. While it is difficult to predict which laws will be in effect by the end of 2005, it is clear today that Iraqi women's freedom and social and political status hang in the balance, suspended between the shadow of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

NONDISCRIMINATION AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE

It is difficult to assess the status of women's rights at this transitional period in Iraq. On March 8, 2004, the Iraqi Interim Governing Council (IGC), with the approval of the CPA, signed an interim constitution (the Transitional Administrative Law), to be effective until a permanent constitution is written following national elections in 2005.

The 2004 interim constitution guarantees women equal rights with men and 25 percent representation in the National Assembly. Article 12 declares that "All Iraqis are equal in their rights without regard to gender, sect, belief, nationality, religion, or origin, and they are equal before the law. Discrimination against an Iraqi citizen on the basis of his gender, nationality, religion, or origin is prohibited." Article 30 of the interim constitution also states, "The electoral law shall aim to achieve the goal of having women constitute no less than one quarter of the members of the National Assembly." The extent to which these guarantees will be translated into practice, however, remains to be seen.

In 1970, two years after seizing power, the Ba'ath regime drafted a new constitution, the Iraqi provisional constitution. This constitution remained in effect until its suspension by the CPA in April 2003. Article 19 of the 1970 constitution guaranteed women equal rights with men and stated that all citizens of Iraq are equal before the law regardless of gender, language, religion, or social origin. This applied across the religious and ethnic spectrum of the country, and the secular courts of Iraq made no differentiation between citizens, whether they were male or female, Arab, Kurd, or Turkmen.

Prior to 2003, Iraqi courts were secular and administered by the Ministry of Justice. The judges and other court functionaries were civil servants paid by the state. Women were legally considered adults in Iraq and were fully capable of representing themselves in court; they had the same recourse to justice as men. However, given the patriarchal nature of Iraqi society and the prevalence of tribal organization, women have been less likely than men to resort to the court system. This has been particularly true in cases of domestic disputes, which tend to be settled through mediation by family elders and religious leaders. Nevertheless, the law encourages women to represent themselves and plead their cases in court; this is true today, as it was before 2003.

Iraq was one of the first Muslim countries to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1986, albeit with reservations. Reservations were applied to Articles 2(f), 2(g), 9, and 16, which address women's rights in the private sphere, such as marriage and family relations. The state argued that the existing state laws, which were based on progressive interpretations of Islamic law (Shari'a), should continue to regulate these domains. Moreover, whereas CEDAW's Article 9 guarantees a woman the right to confer her own nationality upon her child, Iraqi Nationality Law (43/1961) states that only the father has the right to confer nationality on the child.

Iraqi women achieved significant strides in the political, economic, and educational spheres throughout the 1970s. These achievements were underwritten by state-sponsored laws that were, on the whole, liberal and nondiscriminatory. The ideologically secular and socialist Ba'ath regime introduced social and economic reforms that in many ways benefited women, who were specifically targeted to spearhead Iraq's modernization. Legal reforms included government-issued decrees that outlawed a Muslim husband's ability to verbally divorce his wife and limited the authority to grant divorce strictly to the courts. Reforms to Iraq's Law of Personal Status also forbade a husband to take a second wife without the permission of his first wife and made it easier for women to gain custody of their children in cases of divorce or separation.

In December of 1972, the government established the General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW) to raise women's awareness and to ensure their participation in the economic and social development of the country. The GFIW, which was in effect an implementing arm of state policies, managed to play an important role in promoting the general welfare of Iraqi women. The GFIW ran more than 250 rural and urban community centers that offered job training, literacy programs, and legal advice to women. Moreover, the GFIW provided the means for women activists to attain high political positions that allowed them to lobby effectively for legal reforms on behalf of women, especially in areas of personal status (marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance). By utilizing radio and television, the GFIW educated women on their legal rights and provided them with practical advice on how to pursue these rights in the courts.

In the mid-1970s, newly introduced laws mandated that boys and girls must attend primary school. Women were encouraged to pursue higher education and join the work force. By the late 1970s, it was estimated that women made up about 60 percent of the Iraqi civil service. However, the advance in women's status was not uniform throughout all sectors of Iraq's society. The religiously conservative and tribal circles continued to maintain patriarchal traditions that called for the restriction of women to domestic duties within the household.

The gains that women achieved in the 1960s and 1970s began to unravel with the onset of the Iraq-Iran war, which started one year after Saddam assumed power in 1979. Triggered by long-standing territorial disputes, the war lasted eight years and ended in 1988 with a UN-arranged ceasefire treaty. Iraqi war casualties were estimated to number anywhere between one-quarter and one-half million people. War expenses depleted Iraq's $35 billion in foreign reserves and incurred a debt of over $80 billion. The massive loss in human life and the economic cost of the war, together with the lower oil prices of the 1980s, combined to undermine the capacity of the Ba'ath regime to sustain the social welfare state it had started to build in the 1970s. Shortages of food and medicine, rampant inflation, and degraded health care services took a heavy toll on the Iraqi population; women, a large number of whom were widowed heads of households, particularly suffered.

In an attempt to bolster his faltering regime and stem the growing tide of opposition, Saddam took measures to appease and gain the support of the conservative religious and tribal leaders. He issued decrees that suspended or reversed a number of progressive laws that had raised the ire of the conservative elements in Iraq. In 1982, for example, he issued decrees that forbade Iraqi women from marrying foreigners. In 1988, in order to make room for the demobilized soldiers, women were discouraged from working in offices and factories and encouraged to take early retirement and return to "the home."

In 1990, Article 111 was introduced into the Iraqi penal code; the decree reduced prison sentences from eight years to no more than six months for men who kill their female relatives and plead family "honor" as justification, thus reviving the practice of "honor killings," which had been on a decline in Iraq.

Legal restrictions were also placed on women's freedom of movement during this time; women were forbidden to travel outside Iraq without being accompanied by a male relative. In 1993, Saddam reversed one of his own earlier decrees with a new presidential decree that allowed Iraqi men to marry a second and third wife without the consent of the first wife. Compulsory education for women was all but ignored so that by the end of 2000, less than 25 percent of Iraqi adult women were literate.

Iraqi women's involvement in civic activities dates back to the early 1940s, when women's charitable and educational organizations participated in the national struggle for independence from the British. Prior to the Ba'ath party regime, Iraqi women, particularly the educated urban elite in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra, were active participants in a dynamic civil society. As a measure of control, the Ba'ath party acted to dismantle many of Iraq's civil society organizations, including women's literary and charitable organizations; soon after, the regime established the General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW) to help implement the state's agenda on women's issues.

After a long period of state-imposed restrictions on political rights and civil liberties, women today are taking advantage of increased freedom of expression and the ability to organize by lobbying actively for better representation in the political process. A large number of women's NGOs, by some accounts 80 in Baghdad alone, have formed in Iraq. Iraq's women activists and NGOs include educated upper and middle class Iraqi women who had been living abroad before the toppling of Saddam's regime, Kurds with 12 years of experience working with international NGOs and human rights groups, and women who were active members of the Iraqi Communist Party and who had worked for women's rights in the past. In addition, several Iraqi women from poor neighborhoods have been trained by international NGOs since 2003 and are now committed advocates for women's rights. The diversity of NGOs ranges from groups that advocate for a secular and liberal government to those who call for an Islamic state governed by Shari'a.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The government should ensure that women are included in the process of drafting the new Iraqi constitution.
2. The government should include a nondiscrimination clause in the new constitution to guarantee women's equal status as citizens.
3. The government should remove all reservations to CEDAW and take steps to implement it locally by bringing national laws in conformity with CEDAW.

AUTONOMY, SECURITY, AND FREEDOM OF THE PERSON

In addition to Iraq's strong tradition of patriarchy, the rise of religious extremism has had a direct impact on women's lives. Several customs and traditions place real limits on women's personal freedom and autonomy. Culturally, individual rights are subordinated to the welfare of the large extended family, which remains a strong institution in Iraq. Patriarchal tribal values tend to be more dominant in the rural areas, where concern about family "honor" and reputation often result in early marriage for females and women's confinement to the household.

Iraq's cultural mosaic comprises various linguistic, ethnic, and religious groups that have a long history of mutual accommodation. Iraqi citizens, men and women, have mostly enjoyed the freedom to practice their religion. However, the Shi'a population was not always free to participate in the political affairs of the country under Saddam's regime. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, religious tensions, factionalism, and religious militancy have been on the rise.

No laws have forbidden Iraqi women to drive or be alone in public, but a 1988 presidential decree prohibited women under the age of 45 from leaving the country without a male relative. While the Iraqi interim government repealed this decree in 2003, the state of lawlessness and the breakdown of order that followed the U.S. occupation have resulted in everyday restrictions on women's movement, with increased incidents of abduction, sexual assault, and rape. Many women are reluctant to leave their homes for work or shopping without the protection of a male relative. Many women who work with foreign organizations operating inside Iraq have been harassed or have had their lives threatened, and in some cases, have been killed.

The Qanun Al-Ahwal Al-Shakhsiyya Al-Muwahhad (Unified Law of Personal Status) regulates the domestic life of Iraqi men and women. It was first codified in 1959 and has since gained 12 amendments. Its principles are based on the Muslim Shari'a, as interpreted by the Ja'afari (Shi'a) school of jurisprudence. Most of the amendments, which were introduced by the secular Ba'ath regime, granted more rights to women than those provided under the 1959 law in areas such as divorce, inheritance, and the custody of children. For example, the Personal Status Law was amended to provide authority to Iraqi judges to grant divorced women custody of their children until the age of 10 (previously it was 7 for boys and 9 for girls), at which time, the judge can decide to extend the custody until the age of 15.

Early marriage is still a problem, however. Despite Iraqi law that forbids marriage of girls under the age of 15, girls as young as 12 years old are routinely married off to cousins or other relatives, in both the cities and the villages of Iraq. Most girls in early marriages do not have the freedom to refuse the marriage.

In December of 2003, the Coalition-appointed IGC took a major step backward on women's rights when, after hasty deliberations in a closed session, it passed Resolution Number 137. In one stroke, this resolution acted to void the liberal and secular Iraqi Law of Personal Status by replacing it with Islamic Shari'a law, including some of the most conservative interpretations of Islamic text. The resolution declared that in matters of personal status, each religious community should be governed by its own religious laws. Among other things, the resolution gave self-appointed, all-male, conservative clerics total power over matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody, signaling an erosion of the rights previously guaranteed to women under the national law that equally applied to all citizens.

Women's organizations and human rights activists, both inside and outside Iraq, actively and immediately condemned Resolution 137. Ambassador Bremer did not sign the resolution into law, and when the IGC repealed Resolution 137 two months later by a vote of 15 to 10, several council members left the meeting in protest. This incident, among other things, is a forceful reminder that women's rights and freedoms in Iraq remain hostage to the whims and dictates of any group that is in power.

No specific laws protected women from torture under Saddam's regime; torture was used against both men and women by the state. In most cases, women, like men, were fired from their jobs, put in prison, and often tortured not because of their gender, but because of their political views and activities or their relationships with alleged enemies of the regime.

No cases of slavery have been reported in Iraq. However, a pre-existing problem with human trafficking that resulted from the UN Economic Sanctions and the 1991 Gulf War has intensified due to the breakdown in law and order, unemployment, and decreased social welfare that followed the 2003 war. These conditions have expanded the opportunities for organized networks of human trafficking and increased prostitution, as well as the exploitation of children, many of whom now live on the streets in Baghdad.

The post-conflict breakdown in public order in 2003 resulted in increased violence directed at civilians, especially women. Daily reports of harassment, abduction, and rape, as well as the rampant violence connected with common criminals and terrorist groups, have kept women confined to their homes. Families are afraid to send their daughters to school without male escorts; universities and colleges report a sharp decline in the attendance of female students. Increasingly large numbers of women are choosing to wear the veil, or hijab, not necessarily out of religious conviction but as a way to avoid harassment and to protect themselves in public. Iraqi women who worked for the Coalition forces found themselves threatened by conservative religious clerics who used the Friday sermon and street pamphlets to warn women that they would be maimed or killed if they worked for the "military occupiers and the infidels." Several women were, in fact, targeted and murdered en route to work in the Green Zone or to a military base.

Domestic violence does occur, but there are no published statistics on its prevalence. The stigma attached to rape and domestic violence in Iraq, and the fear of retaliatory violence by male family members, prevents an overwhelming majority of women from reporting these incidents or seeking legal redress. In spring of 2003, the CPA, along with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, announced plans to open a shelter in Baghdad for female victims of domestic violence; a few shelters already exist in the Kurdish region that were established by Kurdish NGOs.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The United Nations and other international groups should provide immediate training and financial support to local Iraqi women's NGOs to create awareness of protections for women against violence, to establish shelters, and to provide counseling and support services to victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse.
2. The Iraqi Ministry of Justice should institute a standing Committee of Experts, comprised of legal experts who specialize in women's human rights, to safeguard the rights of women in the Personal Status Law of Iraq.
3. The international community should provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to assist in the drafting of a law that protects women from all forms of violence, including domestic violence.

ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Women's access to economic rights in Iraq over the last 50 years has been greatly influenced by the country's overall political, economic, and social environment. While the Ba'ath regime's social and economic reforms of the 1960s and 1970s helped to improve the legal status of women, the country's wars and imposed sanctions, as well as Iraq's patriarchal attitudes and traditions, have heavily impacted women's lives and have limited their economic opportunities and rights.

In Iraq, a woman's right to own, buy, and sell property; lend and borrow money; enter into contracts; and run her own business is underwritten by state laws. The court respects these laws, and many Iraqi women are known to sue brothers and ex-husbands in court over property disputes. Iraqi businesswomen enter into business contracts, hire and fire employees, and represent themselves in court.

A married Muslim woman is under no legal obligation to support her family with her income. A Muslim husband, on the other hand, is legally obliged under Iraq's laws to support his wife and children. In general, wage-earning women are free to dispose of their incomes as they choose. How a woman spends her income or uses her assets varies with each case in Iraq, generally having little to do with religion or law.

Women have the right to inherit property and can bequeath their personal property to their children under Iraq's Personal Status Law. Women's inheritance is regulated by a strict quota system that is in accordance with the Shari'a, as interpreted by the Ja'afari school of jurisprudence in Iraq. Under Iraq's laws, men receive a larger share of inheritance than women, which is in accordance with men's legal obligations to financially support their families. Specific circumstances and exceptions do exist, however, particularly among the Iraqi Shi'a, who permit an only daughter to inherit her father's full property and the family house. In some cases, non-Muslim Iraqi women married to Muslim Iraqi men may face problems in claiming the family assets if their in-laws decide to dispute the widow's claims. Court officials, however, tend to side with the widows.

In 1976, a Compulsory Education Law (118) mandated that all children between the ages of 6 and 10, regardless of their gender, must attend primary school; after the age of 10, girls may be withdrawn from school if their parents so desire. New colleges and universities were established throughout the country during this time, and women were encouraged to pursue higher education. In 1979, additional legislation was passed requiring all illiterate Iraqis between the ages of 15 and 45 to attend reading classes provided free at literacy centers operated by the GFIW. These centers specifically targeted women and as a result, the literacy gap between men and women narrowed significantly by the mid-1980s. By the early 1990s, female literacy rates in Iraq were the highest in the region.

The 1970 Iraqi constitution and subsequent legislation granted women the right to work outside the home. Article 4 of the Unified Labor Code established the right to equal pay, while Articles 80 to 89 charged the state with the protection of women from harassment in the work place. In 1971, a maternal law was enacted that provided working women six months' paid maternity leave with the option for an additional six months of unpaid leave.

The massive increase in oil revenues in the early 1970s led the government to undertake large-scale development projects and expand its health and education programs. Faced with labor shortages to meet these new demands, the Iraqi government opened its doors to foreign workers and encouraged Iraqi women to join the work force. The state provided subsidized nurseries for the children, free transportation to the work place, and subsidized housing. These facilities were mainly provided to professional women who were working in the public sector in the urban areas.

Women who graduated from the newly established universities, including those in the provinces, were all guaranteed employment by the state. In 1976, the Iraqi Bureau of Statistics reported that women constituted approximately 40 percent of teachers, 30 percent of doctors, 50 percent of dentists, 25 percent of lab technicians, 15 percent of accountants, and 15 percent to 20 percent of civil servants. Nevertheless, women were still victims of gender discrimination with respect to promotions and access to positions of authority, which were, and continue to be, the reserve of men. It is interesting to note that while women's increased participation in the workforce in the 1970s provoked little opposition from the more conservative constituents of society, some of these same groups had earlier opposed women's education.

The economic downturn following the Iraq-Iran War and the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1990 Gulf War had a disproportionate effect on women, many of whom were widowed and had become de facto heads of households. To win the support of the tribal and conservative religious leaders, Saddam ordered the gender segregation of high schools and discouraged women from competing with men for jobs. Saddam made speeches to the effect that a woman's national responsibility was to make room for Iraqi men in the labor field and that they should return to their "sacred" duty as mothers. Many women during this time were either fired from their jobs or driven out by low wages.

In 1977, Iraq reported that women constituted 12 percent of the total working population. In 1997, this figure had dropped to 9.7 percent. These figures, however, only account for the percentage of those employed in the formal sector as wage earners and do not include agricultural workers and the many women who worked in the informal sector. A UN/World Bank Needs Assessment survey conducted in the summer of 2003 noted that women comprised no more than 23 percent of the formal work force, mostly "as mid level professionals in the public and service sectors and in rural areas as seasonal agricultural workers." This survey, however, included agricultural and service workers. Needless to say, there are little to no reliable statistics at this time concerning women's present status in the labor field. At the time of the UN/World Bank survey, it was estimated that more than 50 percent of the labor force was unemployed or underemployed.

When schools reopened in 2003 after the U.S. occupation, women principals and teachers went back to classes. Despite the new CPA-established pay scales that were nondiscriminatory toward women, many women professionals were reluctant to return to their place of employment, preferring to wait for wide-scale looting of offices and buildings, insecurity, and general chaos to subside.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The United Nations and international NGOs should help the government of Iraq to review its labor laws and gender policies to ensure that all laws and procedures protect women's rights to work without discrimination and harassment.
2. The government of Iraq, in cooperation with the UN, World Bank, and other international organizations, should train women in entrepreneurial skills, legal rights, and labor laws so that they can actively compete in the post-conflict economy.
3. Governmental and nongovernmental organizations should provide vocational computer and other technical skills training to women students in high school and college, as well as in public community centers, to help them gain practical skills for future jobs.
4. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs should initiate income-generating training programs, including small credit programs, to help women, particularly widows and those living in rural areas, earn money independently.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIC VOICE

Although the 1970 constitution formally guaranteed women equal rights with men, Saddam Hussein's repressive regime served to deny men, women, and children almost all political rights and civil liberties. The authoritarian nature of the Ba'ath regime prohibited the expression of any political views that deviated from the one party line and imposed particularly harsh restrictions on the freedoms of Iraq's ethnic minorities such as the Kurds and religious groups like the Shi'as.

Iraqi citizens were not able to exercise any political rights under Saddam's regime. With the exception of a small circle of high-ranking party members and Saddam's own tribal supporters, Iraqis lived in a "Republic of Fear," subject to the whims of a ruthless dictator and his sycophants. No political parties were allowed under Saddam, and the Ba'ath party strictly controlled the country's professional associations. No groups were in a position to promote and protect the rights of women, or any other Iraqi citizen.

Despite the deteriorating security conditions that have accompanied the fall of the regime, Iraqis are free today to talk openly, to assemble peacefully, to organize themselves into political groups and parties, to publish newspapers, and to access news and information via satellite dishes that were forbidden under Saddam. Taking advantage of this new freedom, and cognizant of the rising postwar power of extremist Muslim groups, Iraqi women activists lobbied the progressive elements of Iraqi society and the CPA to protect and defend their rights. Many women have been concerned that fundamentalist religious groups, Sunni and Sh'ia alike, will succeed in introducing legislative controls on women's lives and undermine their long-established freedom to make personal decisions such as whether or not to veil, to drive, to vote, to work outside the home, to hold political office, and to preside as judges, among other rights.

As far back as the 1950s, Iraq has had a cadre of trained women lawyers. Graduates of the College of Law in Baghdad also work as court clerks and public prosecutors. However, very few women have served as judges due to a cultural resistance to women serving in high posts. In 2003, a U.S military commander in Najaf appointed an Iraqi woman lawyer as the first female judge in the conservative city of Najaf. Her appointment brought protests from lawyers, both men and women, and from conservative Shi'a clerics who issued fatwas, rulings on Islamic law, claiming that Islam forbids women judges; this led to her forced resignation.

In the 1980 parliamentary elections, women won 16 out of 250 seats on the National Council; in the following elections in 1985, women won 33 council seats, representing 13 percent of the total body. However, these were party-controlled elections that did not represent any democratic process and therefore had little lasting impact on women's political representation or women's political rights.

The Coalition's stated goal in 2003 to promote women and protect their rights did not immediately translate into viable programs or action. While it is generally recognized that women make up anywhere from 54 to 60 percent of the Iraqi population, only three women were appointed to the 25-member IGC, which was formed in July 2003. No women were included in the nine-member rotating presidential council or in the drafting committee of the Transitional Administrative Law (interim constitution). Again, in August of 2003, a 25-person interim cabinet was selected and only one position, the Minister of Municipalities and Public Works, was allocated to a woman. The CPA did not appoint any women as governors in any of the 18 provinces.

In 2003, the U.S. allocated $27 million dollars to support women's programs in Iraq. Under the guidance of CPA advisers and gender experts, the U.S. and other foreign sources funded Iraqi women to organize a number of national women's conferences and to support newly formed local NGOs that focus on women's issues. It is too early to assess the overall impact of such limited initiatives; by early 2004, only a small portion of the funds for women's programs had been spent, and only one of nine planned women's centers had been established in Baghdad.

Newly formed women's organizations, such as The Iraqi Women's League, The Iraqi Higher Council for Women, and The Organization of Women's Freedom, among others, are actively working for women's full representation in the political process and to ensure that the women's rights agenda does not get marginalized in the country's slow and painful road to a new democratic Iraq. These groups have organized national and regional conferences, held open public meetings to discuss the status of women in Iraq, and presented their cases in international meetings. In 2003, Iraqi women activists lobbied both the CPA leadership and the Iraqi Governing Council for a 40 percent quota for women in the National Assembly and any subsequent legislative bodies; the result was a 25 percent minimum representation in the National Assembly.

Kurdish women in Iraq's three northern provinces have enjoyed a relatively privileged status over the last 13 years. In 1991, following a failed Kurdish uprising against the government of Saddam Hussein, allied troops forced the withdrawal of the Iraqi army from the region and established a safe haven zone in the Kurdish region of Iraq. This soon led to the creation of a politically autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq that was completely independent from the rest of Iraq; the Kurds had their own government and international aid. Under allied protection and with the help of international organizations, Kurdish women leaders succeeded in establishing dozens of well-organized, well-financed, and effective women's NGOs. Kurdish women successfully lobbied for a law against crimes against women perpetrated in the name of "honor" and increased women's representation in the regional administrative system.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The international community should ensure that Iraqi women are able to participate fully in all aspects of political life in Iraq.
2. The international community should train Iraqi women political activists and their NGOs to monitor women's participation in decision-making posts at all levels.
3. The new government of Iraq should take affirmative steps to enact laws and set up implementing mechanisms that ensure women's appointments to high-level decision-making posts in all governing and administrative institutions.
4. International women's rights and human rights organizations should develop networks and joint projects with Iraqi women's rights organizations to support their advocacy efforts to increase women's representation in Iraqi politics.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS

Massive oil revenues in the 1970s enabled the Ba'ath regime to establish the early foundations for a socialist, welfare-oriented society. In the 1960s and 1970s, Iraq had a quality health care system, with decent access to medical service, well-equipped hospitals and clinics, and subsidized medicine. Conditions began to decline in the mid-1980s however, and by the 1990s, Iraq's health care system was in crisis. Lack of investment and insufficient upkeep led to the physical deterioration of hospitals and clinics, as well as a lack of equipment and qualified staff. The years of war and economic sanctions, and the rampant corruption that permeated all state institutions, took the greatest toll on Iraq's most vulnerable groups – the elderly, women, and children.

In the 1980's, the government initiated a pro-natal policy to spur population growth during the Iraq-Iran war; they encouraged women to have more children and offered modest subsidies for families. However, the deterioration in health services meant higher risks for women, who suffered from malnutrition and who had limited access to prenatal care and hospitals. Women's health care during this time often took low priority behind the needs for family food and medical care for men at war.

While the situation improved somewhat after the introduction of the Oil-For-Food program in 1996, a reproductive health survey conducted by Physicians for Human Rights in July of 2003 found the maternal death rate in Iraq to be 292 per 100,000. A UN/World Bank Joint Needs Assessment report in the summer of 2003 revealed that general insecurity and gender-based violence prevented many women from seeking health care for themselves and their children. Current plans to phase out food rations in the midst of severe inflation and a chaotic transition to a market economy is likely to further jeopardize the health of poor female heads of households and their children.

A woman's ability to make autonomous decisions about family planning varies according to the family's level of education, religious beliefs, and social standing, as well as additional socio-cultural factors. However, given the strong patriarchal bias of Iraqi society, women's sexuality and reproductive choices remain within the confines of marriage and family life. The pro-natal Ba'ath government had made abortion illegal.

Early marriage for girls is still practiced in the rural parts of Iraq, especially in areas that retain a strong tribal organization; but widows are not traditionally forced to marry against their wishes. Female virginity is highly prized, and brides are expected to be virgins; virginity tests may be carried out in certain cases, but little research has been done on this topic. While there are no statistics on the prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Iraq, it is not believed to be a general problem. However, studies have shown that FGM is practiced in the southern half of Iraqi Kurdistan and is most prevalent in rural areas.

Iraq does not have any laws that discriminate against women and their rights to housing; women may own their houses independently of their husbands. Subsidized housing is accessible to most unmarried or widowed women employed by the government. While there are no known laws that forbid a woman from living alone, social pressures may discourage it.

A woman's influence, in general, is limited to the household and rarely extends to the community unless she happens to be in public office. While women constitute the majority of school principals in Iraq, even women doctors, who are highly respected in society, have not been able to extend their influence in the community in any organized way. Iraqi women have no role in tribal decision making, which remains strictly a male domain. Yet, Iraqi women who worked in international groups in Iraq during 2003 were able to help organize and recruit women to municipal advisory councils, which have begun to play an important role in the community and even city-wide affairs.

Before 2003, Iraqi women were well represented in the media. They worked as sound engineers, producers, and program presenters. While Iraqi women, at this time, are both eager and wary of pushing their way into the public arena, by the end of 2003, a large number of Iraqi women were again working in various newspapers, radios, and local and international television.

The economic depression of the 1990s and the Gulf War had a particularly drastic effect on the large and increasing number of widows in Iraq who are heads of households. The by-products of the 2003 war, such as shortages of electricity, clean water, cooking oil, and gasoline, coupled with a high rate of unemployment, poverty, and rampant inflation have also further exacerbated the plight of Iraq's women, especially the widows. In the first years of the Iraq-Iran war, the regime paid handsome stipends to the widows of war heroes, but by the late 1980s, the government stopped these subsidies. Another social by-product of the wars has been the large number of unmarried women in Iraq today; some attribute this new phenomenon to the unbalanced gender ratio, among other things.

Many Iraqi women are discouraged by the prevailing state of insecurity and the resulting harm to the already weak social services sector. Restoration of security in Iraq will greatly help women and all citizens of Iraq. Another major obstacle to women's social and cultural rights protection is the general lack of awareness of women's rights in Iraqi society due to the country's prolonged isolation from the outside world. There is an urgent need for nationwide civic awareness campaigns on basic human rights, citizenship rights, and women's rights.

Due to decades of living under authoritarian rule and state restrictions on civil society activity, the NGO movement in Iraq is new and inexperienced, lacking organizational capacity and the needed skills to work locally, nationally, and regionally. Civil society groups, particularly women's groups, need urgent training and support in advocacy methods, organizational management skills, networking, information technology, and civic participation issues, along with training and information on women's human rights and basic human rights. In order for these programs to be successful, Iraqi women must also be provided with quality education, vocational training, adequate health care, and effective social welfare programs. These efforts should be long-term and locally sustainable. There is no doubt that this is a critical juncture for Iraqi women; unless they remain active and vigilant, they risk the erosion and loss of their recently gained political rights and civic voice.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Iraqi health care providers, government service agencies, and women's rights groups should design long-term programs to provide mental health care services to Iraqi women.
2. International organizations and funding agencies should work closely with Iraqi journalists and women's rights advocacy groups to help them develop radio and television programs devoted to women's needs and priorities.
3. International donors, the United Nations, and international NGOs should work closely with Iraqi women's groups to design specific projects to empower widows and women with disabilities.
4. International human rights organizations and USAID should provide financial assistance and training in advocacy, media, and communication skills to Iraqi women's rights groups and women leaders.

---

AUTHOR: Amal Rassam is an Iraqi-American who was born and raised in Iraq. She received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. A retired professor of anthropology who taught at the City University of New York, Professor Rassam works in development as a consultant on gender issues and civil society, with focus on the Middle East. She is co-author, with Daniel Bates, of Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East, a book published by Prentice Hall.

---

NOTES

[Refworld note: source files did not contain inline references to these notes; they have been included to enable further reading and research.]

1. Report to the Congress Pursuant to Section 1506 of the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2003 (Public Law 108-11) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 2 June 2003), 2.

2. International Religious Freedom Report 2003 – Iraq (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 18 Dec. 2003), http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2003/c10269.htm.

3. "Country Profiles: Iraq" (Beirut: UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [ESCWA], 2003), http://www.escwa.org.lb/divisions/ecw/profile/iraq/main.html.

4. In 2000, after strong lobbying by Kurdish women's rights organizations, the administration of the semi-autonomous regions of Kurdistan in northern Iraq suspended Article 111 of the penal code.

5. "Occasional Paper: Situation of Women in Iraq" (U.N. Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq [UNOCHR], 28 May 2003).

6. While the Law of Personal Status applies to all citizens, special cases are referred to courts set up to address issues pertaining to non-Muslims.

7. The International Zone (formerly known as the Green Zone) is the heavily guarded area of closed-off streets in central Baghdad where U.S. occupation authorities live and work.

8. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2002: Iraq (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2002).

9. "Country Profiles: Iraq" (Beirut: UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [ESCWA], 2003), http://www.escwa.org.lb/divisions/ecw/profile/iraq/main.html.

10. Law 151/1970, later replaced by Law 81/1987.

11. In 1975, Iraq's annual income from oil averaged $8 billion.

12. Nicholas Birch, "Genital Mutilation Is Traditional in Iraq's Kurdistan," Women's eNews, 1 August 2004, http://www.womenenews.org.