Profile Gender of the Conflict in IRAQ
WomenWarPeace.org
G ender Profile of the Conflict in ..................Ge n d e r P r o f i l e o f t h e C o n f l i c t i n
Iraq
Contents:
I n tro d u ct io n T he Imp a ct o f t he C o nf l i ct o n Ira q i Wom e n W o m e n 's P e a c e Bu i ld i n g A c t iv it ie s i n I r a q T he P la y e rs Wha t U NIFE M i s do ing in Ira q Latest UN Documents Endnotes
I n t r o d u c t iio n Introduct on
Women have played important roles throughout Iraq's history. It was in the early years of secular Baathist socialism and early in Saddam Hussein's rule that women's status and rights were formally enshrined in legislation and treaties. In 1970, a new constitution nominally made Iraqi women and men equal under the law (although family law continued to favour men). Under Saddam Hussein, women's literacy and education improved, and restrictions on women outside the home were lifted. Women won the right to vote and to run for political office, and they could drive, work outside the home and hold jobs traditionally held by men. Before 1991, female literacy rates in Iraq were the highest in the region, Iraq had achieved nearly universal primary education for girls as well as boys, and Iraqi women were widely considered to be among the most educated and professional women in the Arab world. However, the promotion of women's rights was in part due to necessity brought about by war. During the 1980s, Iraq was engaged in a devastating war with Iran, and many of the progressive reforms were instituted at that time because women were needed to maintain civil society while men were at war. Thus while Iraqi women were making gains in civil life, they were also suffering the effects of armed conflict on the wider society--politically, personally and economically. In addition to the effects of the Iran-Iraq war that were felt across the country, repression and violence were used by the Iraqi government against its own people. In northern Iraq, thousands of men, women and children perished in the chemical bombardments, mass executions, mass expulsions and other indiscriminate methods of ethnic cleansing employed by Baghdad during the 1987-88 Anfal campaign. In 1991, an uprising by Shia in southern Iraq was met with widespread human rights abuses by the Iraqi government against suspected Shia oppositionists, as well as
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systematic repression against the Marsh Arabs that reduced their population from 250,000 in 1991 to fewer than 40,000 in 2003.1 After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990--when the Security Council placed Iraq under economic sanctions (through resolution 661)--and the 1991 Gulf War, the country's economy plummeted. Women were severely affected in all areas of their lives, including physical and psychological health, the burden of their domestic responsibilities, their economic status, and their marital life. At the same time, the government in Baghdad brutally cracked down on any signs of dissent to consolidate its hold on power, and women--whether because they had family members suspected of dissent or because they were oppositionists in their own right--were harassed, imprisoned, "disappeared", tortured, beaten, raped and executed, or lost their husbands, sons and brothers to similar treatment. Hussein also attempted to maintain legitimacy after the Gulf War by appeasing religious fundamentalists and other conservatives, bringing in anti-woman legislation such as a 1990 presidential decree granting immunity to men who committed honour crimes. More than 4,000 women were victims of this law. In contrast, the semi-autonomy of Kurds in Iraq's three northern governorates (Iraqi Kurdistan) allowed women to take great political strides forward during the 1990s. In 2003, two of the 26 cabinet members in the Kurdistan Regional Government were women, and women occupied numerous posts among ministry staff.2 With the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the Security Council reaffirmed, in the second paragraph of resolution 1483 (22 May 2003), its commitment to a "rule of law that affords equal rights and justice to all Iraqi citizens without regard to ethnicity, religion, or gender," recalling its pledge to promote gender equality as outlined in Security Council resolution 1325. However, the 2003 war ushered in a period of instability and insecurity. Looters plundered major cities and unidentified assailants attacked coalition forces, water and oil infrastructure, and official targets. Iraqi women and girls became victims of abduction and rape, and the climate of fear that such crimes created in the society.3 In that environment, hopes that Iraq's recovery and reconstruction would create new opportunities for women and bring women to the peace table were only minimally realized. While US government officials did meet with women's groups to hear their demands for a postwar Iraq, little was practically done to address the needs of Iraqi women or include them in discussions of Iraq's political future. Few women participated in the April 2003 meetings at which delegates discussed the creation of an interim government. Only three women were nominated to the interim Iraqi Governing Council in July 2003: Songul Chapouk, Raja Habib al-Kuzaai and Aqila alHashimi. Women were not included in either the nine-member rotating presidential council or the committee working on constitutional reform. Aqila al-Hashimi was later murdered by unidentified assailants in front of her home. Many Iraqi women began to fear that the "representational" system of government, in which Shia clerics seemed increasingly likely to be given a large role, would in fact install a more conservative interpretation of women's rights than they had known during much of Saddam Hussein's rule.4 While the 14-sector UN needs assessments did address gender as a crosscutting issue through the use of a gender checklist and literature review, there was no opportunity for Iraqi women to meet separately and safely to discuss their roles and needs in the country's recovery and reconstruction process. A UNIFEM/UNDP-planned symposium that would have brought women together from across the country to consult on the National Strategy for the Advancement of Women was postponed due to the August 2003 truck-bombing of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral for Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others. The first post-war government was elected in January 2005 and was hailed as a success for women's political participation: women made up 31% of the new National Assembly (which will
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draft the new constitution), exceeding the target of 25% representation by women outlined in the Transitional Administrative Law. At the same time, significant differences of opinion remained regarding how the new constitution and legislation would deal with women's rights, with even female MPs divided about whether they should be liberalized or brought more in line with Sharia law.
T h e I m p a c t o f t h e C o n f lliic t o n I r a q ii W o m e n The Impact of the Conf ct on Iraq Women I. AFTER MARCH 2003 I. AFTER MARCH 2003
Political and Security Impact
From November 2002 through April 2003, the United States dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets over Iraq, claiming that the information they contained would "protect Iraqi lives and deter Iraqi aggression by providing relevant, factual information to both Iraqi civilians and military troops." The leaflets used the threat of US military superiority to instill a fear of "destruction" in whoever read them, and used images of women and children to supplant any sense of duty to the nation or the government with one of responsibility to the family.5 "The attacks may destroy you or any location of Coalition choosing." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/020-20D.jpg "Coalition forces do not wish to harm the noble people of Iraq.... avoid areas occupied by military personnel." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/Images/izd-027.jpg "Nobody benefits from the use of weapons of mass destruction." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-019a.jpg "Soldiers are laying down their weapons and leaving their posts to return to their families." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-029.jpg "We can see everything." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-038.jpg "Dumping oil poisons waterways, as well as your family's future." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-046.jpg "Who needs you more? Your family or the regime? Return to your home and family." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-050.jpg "The noble people of Iraq are not the target of Coalition Military Operations!" http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-060a.jpg "Assist downed Coalition pilots. Help them return to their families!" http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-1000.jpg "For your safety return to your homes and live in peace." http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-7509.jpg
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Security Council resolution 1483 (22 May 2003) reaffirmed, in the second paragraph, its commitment to a "rule of law that affords equal rights and justice to all Iraqi citizens without regard to ethnicity, religion, or gender," recalling its pledge to promote gender equality as outlined in resolution 1325. Along with the general insecurity that took hold in Iraq after April 2003, Human Rights Watch reported in July of that year that at least 400 women and girls as young as eight years old had been raped during or immediately after the war. Underreporting due to the stigma against victims of sexual violence likely meant that the real figure was much higher. Insecurity, and especially the actual and the perceived dangers of sexual violence, created a climate of fear that prevented women and girls from participating in public life--going to school, going to work, seeking medical treatment, or even leaving their homes. Iraqi women were thus prevented from fully participating in the crucial early phases of the country's postwar and post-dictatorship recovery and reconstruction.6 Human Rights Watch also reported that by July 2003, the nascent Iraqi police force did not yet have the means or expertise to investigate crimes committed in the current insecure environment--the combined result of de-Baathification measures, which removed all senior police officers from their posts, and of the destruction that occurred both during the war and in postwar looting. As well, the all-male Iraqi police force had not received training on the legal and procedural rights of women. Police officers often reacted with indifference or outright hostility to female victims of rape or sexual assault when they attempted to report the crimes, and often refused or were unable to investigate their cases. 7 In 2003, surveys and available data indicated that Iraq was the country most affected by Explosive Ordnance (EO), Unexploded Ordnance and landmines. In the three northern governorates, numbers indicated that 1 in 5 people lived in a mine-affected community. Available casualty figures were extremely high, with 70 casualties over six weeks in the three northern governorates and 324 in four southern governorates (94.6% of the latter male, and many under five years of age). 8In south and central Iraq, urban and rural populations were placed at increased risk, after the 2003 war, from hundreds of munitions storage containers, EO, and fresh mines and cluster munitions used during the war.9 With men and boys at the highest risk for mine-related injury, women take on both an extra burden of care for the injured and extra responsibility that had been the purview of men prior to their injuries. On 20 September 2003, Aqila al-Hashimi, one of the three women on Iraq's Governing Council and the only Council member to have served in the former government of Iraq, was fatally wounded by gunfire from unidentified assailants when leaving her home, dying from her injuries five days later.10 In a postwar 2003 survey by Physicians for Human Rights, the most significant problems identified by respondents (over 16,000 people, male and female) were physical safety/security.11 Although by October 2003, there was yet no generally accepted estimate of the number of civilians killed during March and April, hospital records and other reports obtained by journalists indicated that many women and girls were killed and wounded as a result of Coalition fire. However estimates may not have included deaths that doctors indirectly attributed to conflict, including women who died due to complications during home births when they could not reach a hospital, or chronically ill people unable to obtain necessary care. The Project on Defense Alternatives estimated that 11,000-15,000 Iraqis were killed during the 2003 war, about 30 percent of them noncombatants.12
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In mid-May, an assessment of three Baghdad schools by Save the Children UK found that attendance was less than 50%. The survey attributed non-attendance by girls mainly to insecurity and fear of kidnapping. By the first week of June, attendance had increased to 75% as arrangements were made for girls to travel to school in groups or to have male family members escort them. However, fear of abductions remained widespread and many parents chose not to take chances with their daughters' safety.13 According to a report by MedAct assessing the impact of the 2003 war on Iraqis, since the end of the war, a combination of increased unemployment and decreased social welfare has led to a rise in sex work and other dangerous occupations. The report notes that the lack of law and order has led to the creation of organized networks in human trafficking, and that the exploitation of children for sex or slavery is likely because more children live on the streets without the protection of family and community networks.14 According to an article in Women's eNews, in January 2004 it was made public that at least 37 American women who served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan hadreported being sexually assaulted by fellow US soldiers.15 In February 2004, Yanar Mohamed, a prominent women's rights activist and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, received a death threat for campaigning to repeal the Governing Council's decision to place family law under religious rather than civil jurisdiction.16 Mohamed received an e-mail threat after appearing on television to defend women's rights. The email read: "Stop speaking out for women's rights, or we will kill you," and was signed by the Army of Sahaba. As a result of the threat, Mohammed and her colleagues hid for a week, wearing bullet-proof vests and canceling all appearances.17 Women's Rights activist Fern L. Holland, an American civilian working with the CPA to advance women's rights in Iraq, was killed in Iraq on 9 March 2004 when the car in which she was traveling was attacked by four gunmen dressed as Iraqi police officers. Two more civilians were killed in the same attack: an American man who had worked for the CPA and a female Iraqi interpreter. Ms. Holland's work in Iraq included investigating human-rights violations, opening women's centers around Iraq and working to ensure that women's rights were enshrined in the interim constitution.18 It has been suggested that she was targeted specifically because of her work on behalf of women's rights.19 Iraqi women working for American forces, for example as laundry women and translators, have been targeted, threatened and killed. In late January 2004, four Iraqi women who worked as cleaners and laundry women for the US Army were killed in a gun attack on the minibus in which they were traveling.20 In late February, two sisters who worked at a US Army base in Baghdad were shot--and one of them killed--when returning home. In early March a translator for Voice of America was killed in Baghdad. And on 11 March, two sisters who did laundry work for US soldiers in Basra were shot to death: their taxi was surrounded by gunmen who ordered the driver out of the car and shot the women at point-blank range. On 10 March, a translator for a US news organization found a handwritten note under her front door that read: "Warning: Those who deal with the atheists and the infidels on the soil of the homeland deserve but death and destruction. Thus, we warn you to stay away from the infidels and the blasphemists, the followers of Satan, otherwise your killing shall be a mercy for Muslims. Those who heed the warning shall be excused." Such events renewed fears that Iraqi support staff, and particularly women, working for Americans were easy targets.21 In March 2004, activists noted that threats against women's rights groups in Iraq were increasing.22
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As of March 2004, more than 100 Iraqi women had been trained as police officers.23 In April 2004, US forces sealed off Falluja and launched a massive offensive against the city after four US contractors were killed and mutilated there on 31 March. US troops reportedly announced over loudspeakers that women, children, and elderly could leave the city, but not "military age men," although men were reported among the thousands who have fled. US military officials said the majority of the Iraqis killed were fighters, but contradictory reports--including from the director of Falluja's general hospital--claimed that many of the dead were women, children and elderly.24 Coordinated suicide attacks on police stations in Basra killed some 68 people, among them a bus full of schoolgirls, aged 14 and 15, and another full of kindergarten-aged children.25 Allegations emerged in April 2004 of sexual and other abuse by US soldiers of Iraqis held in Abu Ghreib prison, notorious for the abuses that were carried out there under Saddam Hussein. Photographs of the alleged abuses26 sparked outrage after they were aired around the world. An investigation by US Major General Antonio Taguba in January 2004 described "systematic and illegal abuse" of Iraqi detainees, which included sexualized humiliation and assault such as "videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees," "a male MP [Military Police] guard having sex with a female detainee" and "forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear".27 Sexualized and gender-based violence against detainees held by Coalition forces was also documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in a February 2004 ICRC report that was later leaked to the public. The report documented various forms of sexual humiliation of detainees, including being given women's underwear to wear under their jumpsuits or being stripped naked and forced to wear women's underwear over the head, while being laughed at and even photographed by male and female soldiers. Interrogators also attempted to coerce detainees with threats against their family, "in particular wives and daughters". The same report described a pattern of violent house arrests in which authorities forced entry, usually after dark, and sometimes arrested all adult males in a household including elderly, handicapped or sick men. In almost all the cases documented by the ICRC, whether of house or of street arrests, families were given no information about where detainees were being taken, or even about the identity of the arresting authority, resulting in the de facto "disappearance" of detainees for weeks or even months.28 Since the majority of detainees taken into custody by Coalition forces in Iraq have been adult men, the burden of worry, tracking down the "disappeared" and providing basic necessities for the family has fallen disproportionately to women in the household. US officials acknowledged detaining Iraqi women in order to convince male relatives to provide information. The Los Angeles Times reported in May 2004 that many of the women detained by US forces were the wives or relatives of senior Baath Party officials or suspected militants, and that interrogators threatened to kill detainees. Five former detainees told their lawyers they had been beaten while in custody. One said she had been raped and knifed by a US soldier.29 According to Professor Huda Shaker, interviewed by The Guardian in May 2004, several women detained in Abu Ghraib were sexually abused and one was raped, became pregnant, and later disappeared. In May 2004, the US Colonel in charge of the prison's detention facilities said that the five women remaining there were kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day with only a Koran.30 According to the US Department of Defense, six women were among the 20 people killed by US forces on 19 May 2004. The circumstances of the attack created controversy: media reports suggested that US forces had attacked a wedding party, while the US military insisted that they
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"insurgents using a smuggling route for foreign fighters and weaponry entering Iraq" and that there were no indications that a wedding party was taking place.31 On 27 May, gunmen attacked the convoy in which Salama al-Khafaji was travelling as she returned from Najaf, where she had been part of a Governing Council delegation negotiating a deal between US forces and the militia of Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr. Al-Khafaji's 18-year-old son and three of her bodyguards were killed in the attack.32 Insurgents who have abducted and executed hostages in Iraq have co-opted women's rights and freedom to justify their actions. In August, two French journalists were abducted along with their Syrian driver. The hostage-takers threatened that the men would be killed unless the French government repealed the 15 March 2004 law banning overt religious symbols from state schools, which includes the hijab worn by some Muslim girls.33 In September, two Americans and a Briton (all male) were taken hostage by insurgents demanding the release of all women from Iraqi jails. Both Americans were beheaded later that month. The UK said it had no Iraqi women in custody. The US military said it was holding only two female weapons scientists (Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash and Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha) and that it had no plans to release them.34 See BBC News for profiles of Dr. Ammash and Dr. Taha.35 BBCArabic.com interviewed six Iraqi women on the impact war has had on their lives. Their responses mixed positive and negative reactions to the conflict and its aftermath. Improved economic security, the end of sanctions and freedom of thought and expression were contrasted with hampered mobility and the continued lack of security that still plague the country.36 According to the November 2004 Human Rights Watch report, "State of the Evidence", over 250 mass graves had been located across Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003. One mass grave near Mosul was believed to contain the remains of "hundreds if not thousands of Kurdish women and children".37 A February 2005 Amnesty International report examines the many ways in which women and girls in Iraq have suffered from government repression and armed conflict in disproportionate or different ways from men, and also how they have been targeted as women. It also shows how discrimination is closely linked to violence against women, and the particular ways in which women have suffered from the breakdown in law and order in many parts of the country since the overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein.38 US troops were accused of detaining two Iraqi women to pressure their fugitive male relatives to turn themselves in. Human rights experts say that detaining the women for this reason, rather than as suspects in their own right, would be a breach of international law. The women were freed on 7 April 2005.39 With violence in Iraq continuing despite the announcement of official end to hostilities on 1 May 2003, the death toll among Iraqis has continued to rise. Activists, both national and foreign, have been particularly targeted. Insurgents have also waged a campaign of hostagetaking. The killings of many foreign hostages (mostly male) has been widely covered in international media, but the BBC notes that hundreds of Iraqis have been kidnapped and held for ransom, but that this is not widely reported.40 Among the many women who have been targeted by this wave of violence are: female human rights activist Marla Ruzicka, who was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad on 18 April 2005;41 Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena,42 who was held in captivity for over a month only to be injured after her release when the car taking her to the airport was fired at by US troops at a checkpoint (an Italian secret service agent was killed while shielding Sgrena from the gunfire);43 "the two Simonas", Italian aid workers Simona Pari and
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Simona Torretta, who were snatched from their office on 7 September 2004 and released following demonstrations by Iraqis in Baghdad 21 days later;44 Dublin-born humanitarian worker Margaret Hassan, an Iraqi citizen who had worked in the country for 30 years, who was abducted on 16 October 2004 and killed by her captors a month later, to the outrage of many Iraqis;45 and women's rights activist Fern Holland (see above). Little information is available about the Iraqi women who have been abducted, injured or killed. On 27 April 2005, Member of Parliament Lamia Abed Khadouri was shot dead at her home. A member of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's coalition, Khadouri was the first MP to be killed since the national elections, held barely three months before.46
Political Participation
With the fall of the Baathist government and its repressive one-party totalitarianism in April 2003, numerous political parties began to emerge. These parties, however, were run almost entirely by men--as was the Coalition Provisional Authority. Early reconstruction efforts led by the United States and Britain in 2003 failed to adequately include women either in leadership positions or as participants in the postwar reconstruction process. The US Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs had only a parttime gender focal point. The 30-member Iraqi reconstruction group organized by the UK government included only five women.47 The legal team that was appointed by the coalition soon after the fall of Baathist Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein's human and civil rights-violating amendments to Iraq's 1969 legal code was made up exclusively of male lawyers and judges.48 On 15 April 2003, Iraqi opposition groups met in Nasiriyah to discuss postwar self-rule. Of the approx. 120 delegates, only four were women and all of them were exiles. The meeting's delegates outlined 13 principles for forming a new Iraqi government and included among them building the country on respect for diversity, particularly respect for the role of women.49 On 28 April 2003, Jay Garner, the first US-appointed interim administrator of Iraq, met with 250 Iraqis representing various groups to discus the creation of an interim government. Only six women attended the meeting, mainly as representatives of Iraqi exile working groups set up before the war by the US State Department's "Future of Iraq" programme. One representative, Zainab al-Suwaij, suggested including more women in the new leadership and giving more support to grassroots organizations. According to al-Suwaij, many delegates were receptive to her suggestions. US Deputy Richard Armitage acknowledged to the BBC that the participation of women in postwar reconstruction process had been inadequate.50 On 3 July 2003, hundreds of women demonstrated in Baghdad, demanding to be included in shaping the political future of the country.51 On 9 July 2003, the International Alliance for Justice initiated a conference in Baghdad to discuss the status of women in the constitution, in the legislation, in the democratic process, in education, in the health system, the economy and social and cultural affairs. More than 80 women from all parts of Iraq attended the conference. The main conference also brought together Iraqi women who had remained in Iraq under the dictatorship, women from the diaspora, and women from the three Kurdish governorates who, for over ten years, were able to promote the
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participation of women in the emerging civil society. Representatives of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and several United Nations agencies also attended the conference discussions.52 Ms. Zakia Hakki, who was a lawyer and judge in Baghdad until 1996 and in 2003 became an advisor to the Ministry of Justice from the Iraqi Reconstruction Development Council, has written position papers outlining her vision for a new (decentralized) government in Iraq, and will be involved in plans to organize the convention that will draft a constitution to be put before the Iraqi people in a referendum before elections. As of mid-2003, she was overseeing the selection of new judges in Iraq and the staffing of the Ministry of Justice, and was working to revitalize Iraqi courts and laws.53 Three women were included in the Iraqi Governing Council, chosen in July 2003 by the US administration in Iraq, none of them from the diaspora: Songul Chapouk, an engineer, teacher, and women's activist; Raja Habib al-Kuzaai, a southern tribal leader who is in charge of a maternity hospital in southern Iraq; and Aqila al-Hashimi, a foreign affairs expert and former diplomat who worked in the foreign ministry under Saddam Hussein. Aqila al-Hashimi was murdered two months later. Although with 3 of 25 seats, women represented only 12 percent of the Governing Council, this was nonetheless an increase in women's political representation over what it had been in recent years under Saddam Hussein.54 As of July 2003, women's organizations in postwar Iraq were still receiving little support from the CPA or from Islamic organizations. Apart from indigenous support, they were only receiving aid from international NGOs.55 When the 25-person interim Iraqi cabinet was selected in August 2003, only one woman was nominated to a post: Nesreen Mustafa al-Barwari (a Kurd) was named Minister of Municipalities and Public Works. As the top Iraqi official in charge of water treatment, waste management, environmental sanitation and municipal facilities, she is one of the most important figures in the Iraqi civil administration. Ms. Al-Barwari, the youngest member of the cabinet, worked as an administrator with UNHCR in the Kurdish autonomous area as of 1991 and later became Minister of Reconstruction and Development in the Kurdistan Regional Government.56 The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs was tasked with supporting women's rights. 57 The Minister for Labour and Social Affairs, Mr. Sami Azara al-Majun, is head of the National Reform Movement and was formerly a member of the Iraqi National Congress (of which he was critical because of its lack of coordination with tribal leaders). He worked in the justice ministry in Saudi Arabia from 1971-1980.58 A Physicians for Human Rights survey in southern Iraq found that although the vast majority of respondents felt that women's human rights were important to the health and development of the community, men indicated less support than women for certain political freedoms, including free expression and association, and many supported restrictions for women outside the home. According to PHR, this suggests that women's views are not being adequately represented in government, since there all but one of the Shia representatives on the interim Govering Council are men.59 In October, the High Council for Women was launched to increase women's participation across all levels of government and monitor progress on the Iraqi women's agenda. The council will give a crucial voice to Iraqi women, who make up 55% of the population. 60 It will also seek to improve health care and education for women and girls and provide advice for women entrepreneurs. The idea for the council, which is led by co-founder Ala Talabani, was the result of
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an Iraqi women's conference held in Hilla earlier in the month, and its actualization was made possible by British funding. The joint UN and World Bank Iraq needs assessment (released October 2003) recommended that steps be taken early in the reconstruction process to ensure women's participation in shaping the country's future and to enshrine gender equity in constitutional processes. The assessment said unequivocally that security and access to basic services for Iraqi women were needs that must be addressed. The assessment also recommended that a Women's Forum be convened so that Iraqi women could identify and articulate their particular needs and priorities; that women's networks should be mobilized and linked with regional women's groups and networks to facilitate effective political participation by Iraqi women; and that the media be effectively used to raise awareness and advocate for key transitional issues. 61 Raja Habib Khuzai and Songul Chapouk, published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on 3 December 2003. They noted that women "are severely underrepresented in the leadership established for the transition [to democracy]" and called for the IGC and the CPA to "ensure women their rightful place at the decision-making table". They asked the United States to help them ensure that the IGC set quotas for women in all levels of government and in the constitutional drafting process in proportion to their percentage of the population; that the IGC live up to its promise to appoint at least 5 women as deputy ministers; that the IGC increase the number of women among its own members and in the successor provisional government, and ensure that these women have real decision-making power. They also called for the new constitution and all related laws to grant equal rights and opportunities for women, and for the creation of a strong gender advisory council, reporting to the head of state and with real authority and responsibility, to represent women's concerns.62 As of December 2003, six women were among the 37 members of the Baghdad City Advisory Council.63 In early December 2003, Shiite members of the IGC selected Dr. Salama al-Khafaji to replace the late Aqila al-Hashimi as the 25th member of the Council. Khafaji, a professor of dentistry at Baghdad University and one of four candidates nominated for the position, is reported not to be affiliated with any political party.64 Songul Chapouk, one of the three female members of the IGC, was quoted in a Women's E-News article saying that she was not present when the Council decision to cancel the Personal Status Law was discussed: she said she had "left the council for a meeting and when I came back, it was over."65 On 8 March 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council adopted the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), to serve as the provisional constitution until a permanent constitution is issued and a new Iraqi government is formed in accordance with it. While it did not enshrine the 40% quota for women's political representation that women's rights advocates had been lobbying for, the TAL did set a goal of 25% representation by women in the National Assembly and included a clause enshrining gender equality and prohibiting gender-based discrimination.66 Seven women were among the 28 new Deputy Ministers appointed by Paul Bremer in April 2004: Dr Sawsan Ali Magid Al-Sharifi (Ministry of Agriculture), Maysoon Salem Al-Damluji (Ministry of Culture), Ms. Hamdia Ahmed Najif (Ministry of Displacement and Migration), Baraka Mahdi Salih Al-Jiboori (Ministry of Electricity), Manal Kamil Elyas Aziza (Ministry of Environment), Dr. Beriwan Abdul-Kareem Khailany (Ministry of Higher Eductation), and Mitha Al-Alami (Ministry of Transportation). 67
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In April 2004, Lakhdar Brahimi met with a separately with a group of human rights advocates, as in political transition and elections, seeking their ideas an Iraqi administration to take over from US-led preparations for elections in early 2005.
group representing women's NGOs, and part of his talks with Iraqis on the UN role about UN assistance with the formation of occupation forces on 1 July, and with
In his 27 April 2004 statement to the Security Council, Lakhdar Brahimi outlined his plan for the political transition process in Iraq. He told the Council that "virtually every Iraqi with whom we met urged that there be no delay in bringing an end to the occupation, by 30 June at the latest. They maintain that view, even though they understand that a democratically elected and therefore fully legitimate government will not be in place by that date." Two key documents call for the dissolution of the Iraqi Governing Council by 30 June 2004. The majority of Iraqis who spoke to the assessment team (these included representatives of women's groups) favour the establishment of a Caretaker Government to tend to day-to-day administration until elections are held in January 2005. Brahimi told the Council that the Iraqi people should select this Government, and that "it should not be difficult to identify extremely qualified candidates--men and women--for every single position, who are representative of Iraq's diversity." Brahimi also suggested that an Iraqi Preparatory Committee be formed to organize a National Conference in July to bring together "1,000 to 1,500 people representing every province in the country, all political parties, tribal chiefs and leaders, trade and professional unions, universities, women's groups, youth organizations, writers, poets and artists, as well as religious leaders, among many others".68 The Security Council strongly supported Brahimi's statement and welcomed the provisional ideas he submitted. 69 The UN Electoral Advisors Team, headed by Carla Perelli, made several visits to Iraq in 2004 to assess the possibility of holding elections in Iraq. In the spring, the team undertook work to create the Independent Electoral Commission, with the appointment of Commissioners scheduled for 31 May. Women's groups and other civil organizations expressed strong interest in the nomination process. Five thousand nomination forms and 6,000 leaflets advertising the process had been distributed across Iraq by 11 May 2004 with plans for another 5,000 to be distributed shortly.70 On 1 June 2004, six women were among the 30 ministers named to the new, sovereign Iraq Interim Government: Dr. Sawsan Al-Sharifi as Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Mishkat Moumin as Minister of Environment, Ms. Pascale Isho Warda as Minister of Immigration and Immigrants, Layla Abd AlLateef as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Ms. Nesreen Berwari as Minister of Municipalities and Public Works and Ms. Narmeen Othman in the newly created Cabinet post of Minister of Women's Affairs. 30 June 2004 was the date set for the full transfer of power from the CPA to the Interim Government, at which time the CPA will cease to exist. The Interim Government is expected to serve for seven months, until a new Transitional Government is chosen through democratic elections to be held as soon as possible and no later than 31 January 2005.71 In June 2004, two women, Hmdia Abbas Muhamad Al-Hussaini and Souad Mohammed Jalal Shalal al-Jabouri, were named to the nine-member Independent Electoral Commission. The autonomous body is responsible for preparing Iraq for elections come January 2005.72 The Secretary-General reported to the Security Council in September 2004 (S/2004/710) that women's groups had participated in the National Conference to select an Interim National Council and promote national dialogue and consensus-building on the country's future, held 15 18 August 2004.73
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The Iraq Ministry of Women's Affairs held the first national women's symposium from 1011 October in Baghdad, with support from UNIFEM. The forum closed with the participation of nearly five hundred delegates from civil society activists, women's NGOs, city councils from different Iraqi governorates, and Iraqi Ministries. MoWA organized and fully prepared the first national Iraqi Women's Forum to mobilize women and strategize the work of the State Ministry. The main outcomes of the forum include formulation of a committee to follow-up on conference's goals and the creation of the national strategy for the advancement of Iraqi women. The conference committee was established to ensure coordination amongst its members, as well as follow-up and achievement of their goals.74 "Windows of Opportunity: The Pursuit of Gender Equality in Post-War Iraq", a report released in January of 2005 by Women for Women International (WWI) is based on a 2004 survey conducted in seven Iraqi cities in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra. The survey's goal was to assess the perceptions of women after the war and to identify their main needs. The report stresses that although security and loss of life remain critical issues in Iraq, the country has entered an early reconstructive period which is vital for creating a foundation for women's rights and participation in the future of the country. According to a 13 January 2005 article about the report, WWI warns that low levels of participation by women in the government will hurt the country. The article also said the "results of the survey of 1,000 Iraqi women showed that 94% of women surveyed want to secure legal rights for women and 84% want the right to vote on the final constitution." WWI's CEO Zainab Salbi stated, "History has shown that when women are involved in the formation of new governments, those nations are more successful in the long run." "This survey shows that women overwhelmingly believe they should have a seat at the table," she added. Unexpectedly, the survey showed that despite increasing violence, 90.6% of women reported that they are hopeful about their future.75 The UN Iraq Electoral Factsheet includes information on how the electoral system will seek to ensure 25% representation by women, as outlined in the Transitional Administrative Law.76 "We have to ensure that the divorced women are not left homeless." Amal Kashif alGhita is one of hundreds of women who ran in the Iraq's national elections. By law women had to make up 30 percent of each list of candidates. Al-Ghita also stated that she wants better schools for girls and new laws to protect children's rights and prevent rape. According to an Associated Press news report from 28 January 2005, the optimism of the candidates belies the sometimesrough path they have had to follow. "Not all Iraqis accept the idea of women in politics whether for cultural or for other reasons", the report said. One of the women interviewed for the story had a posted in her office depicting three women and a child - one of them Margaret Hassan. Written in Arabic, Kurdish and English, were the words: "No for terror and violence against women."77 At the end of January, women candidates in Najaf took to the streets to campaign for election. Among them was Abdul Radha who said about their campaigning, "Now we are going to people, talking to them about our programs." "I talk to them and say I am going to provide job opportunities, I'm going to help widows and poor people", she added. Unlike the majority of other candidates, many of the women have been willing to be named and photographed. "This kind of election is not going to happen every day," says Batoul Farouk, a candidate on the Dawa provincial list who holds a master's degree in Islamic Science and is head of a Najaf women's association.78 According to the International Organization for Migration's Out-of-Country Voting Programme, "265,148 expatriate Iraqis, representing 93.6 percent of registered Iraqi voters in 14 countries around the world went to the polls in Iraq's Transitional National Assembly Election
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between 29-31 January." They did not give a gender breakdown of those expatriates who voted through their programme.79 In a 30 January 2005 New York Times article, Muhammad Abboud, a journalist said he had written a play about the difficulties faced by rural Iraqi women with regard to the elections. Abboud said, "The old ties of tribe, family and religion will determine how many women cast their votes." Ahood al-Fadhly, director of an organization aimed at supporting rural women in the southern part of Iraq also indicated that because of illiteracy levels, rural women were at a disadvantage in asserting themselves in the election process. "The goal is just to get them to vote, regardless of what influences come to bear on the actual choice," she said.80 According to Zainab Al-Suwaij and Ala Talabani Iraq's national elections will determine the fate of women's rights if they will really become equal citizens. In a recent Women's eNews article, the two women "expressed profound concern that candidates with an extremist religious agenda could prevail and usher in an era on suppression of women's rights." On an optimistic note, Talabani said "We, the women, are building bridges among cultural, ethnic, and religious divides."81 Women won 86 of 275 or 31% of seats in Iraq's new National Assembly, elected 30 January 2005.82 A quota system that obliged no less than one in every three candidates on political entity lists is credited for helping women to win an even larger share of seats than the 25% goal outlined in the Transitional Administrative Law (see above). The same quota system was used in elections for the Kurdistan National Assembly and for the Governorate Councils. 83 With 17,000 candidates for all three elections, according to the quota rules at least 5,667 should have been women; for the National Assembly, 2,587 of the 7,761 candidates should have been women (these figures are estimates based on the 1 in 3 quota, not numbers based on the actual lists).84 The National Assembly will draft the new Iraqi Constitution, appoint government officials including the President and two deputies, and legislate by proposing bills and examining bills proposed by the Council of Ministers.85 A 31 March article in the Times86 of London and 12 April article in the New York Times87 highlight the divisions between Iraqis on how much the constitution and legislation should reflect Sharia law, and how liberal they should be in enshrining women's rights. Even in the National Assembly women are divided, with women from different groups advocating for contradictory measures, for instance on the question of inheritance laws and polygamy. On 3 May 2005, the first democratically elected Iraqi government in half a century was sworn in. Of the 29 posts that have been filled, nine are occupied by women (seven key ministries are still vacant).88 They are: Minister of Culture Noori Farhan al-Rawi; Minister of Displacement and Migration Suhaylah Abd-Jaafar; Minister of Environment and Acting Minister for Human Rights Nermin Othman; Minister of Municipalities and Public Works Nasreen Mustapha Berwari; Minister of Science and Technology Basimah Yusuf Bufrus; Minister of State for the Civil Society Alaa Habib Kadhum; Minister of State for National Assembly Affairs Safa al-Din Mohammed al-Safi; Minister of State for Women Affairs Azha Abdel Karimal-Shaikhli; and Telecommunications Minister Juwan Fouad Masum. This represents an increase from the number of women (six) who were part of the interim government.89
Humanitarian Impact 90
Tens of thousands of women and children fled the city for safety after a shaky ceasefire was reached during an offensive by us forces against the city of Falluja in April 2004. US troops
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reportedly announced over loudspeakers that women, children, and elderly could leave the city, but not "military age men," although men were reported among the thousands who fled.91
Impact on Food, Water and Sanitation Infrastructure
Electricity in Baghdad was cut on 3 April 2003, and three weeks passed before it was restored to some areas of the city. Baghdad's water supply was also disrupted during the 2003 war, and had been only partially reconnected by the end of March. Women's ability to provide food and potable water for themselves and their families was thus severely impaired. The 2003 war created serious impediments for the delivery of safe drinking water in Iraq. In addition to the destruction of relevant ministries and the attendant disruption of their programmes, lack of personal security proved a major obstacle to water delivery in Baghdad. Women manage many water treatment plants in the Iraqi capital and throughout the country, and water delivery was disrupted as a result of their inability to leave their homes due to increased sexual violence. In addition, a high incidence of car-jackings impedes work and affects both male and female staff in this sector.92 In a postwar 2003 survey conducted by Phyicians for Human Rights in southern Iraq, respondents identified lack of clean water and lack of medical care as the second and third most important problems, after lack of security. 95 percent of respondents identified infrastructure rebuilding as either "very important" or "extremely important" for the health and development of the community.93 According to a presentation by Nesreen Berwari, Iraq's Minister of Municipalities and Public Works, at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars on 26 February 2004: "For the first time in Iraq's history, it is the education, water and health sectors that are getting the highest allocation in the Iraqi budget." The United States has allocated more than $4 billion to address the problem of contaminated drinking water since April 2003.94 According to a June 2004 IRIN briefing paper on food security, citing data from the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, the World Food Programme and the Public Distribution System (PDS), an estimated 60 percent of Iraqi women and their families still depended entirely on monthly food rations distributed under the Public PDS (managed by the Ministry of Trade). The briefing noted that despite efforts at reducing the effects of poverty, chronic malnutrition stands at 28.8 percent and acute malnutrition at 6.7 percent.95
Impact on Health
According to the United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment, conducted over the summer of 2003, "in the aftermath of conflict, general insecurity and gender violence have prevented women from seeking health care for themselves and their children". The Assessment found health outcomes in Iraq to be among the poorest in the region. These include high maternal and infant mortality and malnutrition, the reemergence of certain communicable diseases adding to the burden of non-communicable conditions and the presence of risk factors for increased rates of transmission of HIV/AIDS (which, they noted, was still relatively low).96 It was reported that between the fall of the Hussein administration in April 2003 and November of that same year, prostitution had become widespread in Baghdad as a result of increasing poverty among women. As well, sexual violence and consensual extramarital sex were reported to have increased. The result was a rise in unwanted pregnancies and illicit abortions, often conducted using unsafe procedures. Although abortion has long been illegal in Iraq, a number of backstreet abortion clinics were reported to have opened in the laxer post-Hussein
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climate. Although some clinics claimed to be equipped to provide "medical quality" services, the Baghdad Al Aliya Women's Hospital alone admitted one or two septic abortions every week. According to one of Al Aliya's emergency room doctors, illicit abortion had already become a major problem in postwar Iraq, with as many as 500 illicit abortions performed from August to early November 2003.97 In April 2005, IRIN reported that doctors in Baghdad had noticed an increase in the number of newborns with physical deformities, which health officials believe may be a result of the mothers' exposure to radiation as a result of years of conflict. Scientists said depleted uranium from weapons used in the 1991 Gulf War could be a primary cause. The most affected regions were in southern Iraq, particularly around Basra and Najaf.98 On 1 May 2005, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) released its report on abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison: "Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces". The report documents both the pervasive sexual humiliation that was used against male detainees and abuses against female detainees. For instance, one elderly woman who claimed to have been held for five days said she was sexually humiliated and abused by male soldiers, one of whom "`straddled her and placed ropes in her mouth and across her eyes and attempted to ride her like a horse'" and "allegedly used a stick to strike her on the buttocks and inserted the stick into her anus while others in the room laughed". Another woman was allegedly attacked by a dog when it was brought into the cell where she was being held. According to PHR, such forms of torture can have devastating mental health consequences, even when they did not cause physical pain. The report cites observations on the impact of sexual torture on Muslims in particular. Male victims "often feel degraded in their manhood" while female victims cannot admit to the experience for fear of rejection and ostracism by their families and communities, and marriages and families have been observed to break up as a result of such violations.99
Impact on Health Services
During the 2003 war, there was a lack of emergency reproductive health care as hospitals--which were difficult to reach--struggled to handle casualties of war with diminishing supplies. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, pregnant women in Baghdad were reported to have rushed to hospitals demanding cesarean sections before their due dates rather than risk giving birth in the midst of war. 100 After April 2003, widespread looting, the erratic supply of water and electricity, and the lack of security weakened an already struggling health care system and created an extremely inhospitable work environment for all health workers, especially women. 101 Postwar UN needs assessments of the health sector found that looting had destroyed 30 percent of health facilities that offered family planning services.102 Postwar UN needs assessments found that insecurity and the threat of sexual violence against women and girls prevented many Iraqi women from seeking health care for themselves or their children in the months after the 2003 war.103 In the unstable period following the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi women and girls who were victims of sexual violence were refused both forensic examinations--even when they had a police referral--and medical treatment.104 An August 2003 reproductive health assessment by UNFPA found that during the last decade more Iraqi women were giving birth at home, often without any skilled help, because they
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lacked access to functioning medical facilities. Security had broken down in many areas and communication and transport networks were poor, while many medical clinics had been damaged or looted. The assessment called for the rehabilitation of health-care infrastructure, the supply of appropriate equipment and drugs, as well as refresher courses for health personnel who have missed international scientific advances over the last decade because of sanctions.105 A study released by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) on 23 March 2004 (and conducted in July 2003) documented past human rights abuses in southern Iraq and unaddressed health needs, particularly for women. The study found a high rate of domestic violence, and suicide rates of 5,000-7,000 for every 100,000 in the past year. PHR also found that fewer than half of the women interviewed had a health care provider during childbirth or received prenatal care for all of their pregnancies. More than a quarter of women reported that they were delivered by unskilled birth attendants primarily at home. The study found Iraq's maternal mortality rate to be 292 per 100,000.106
Impact on Human Rights, including Violence Against Women
Prior to the 2003 war, Iraqi women and girls were able to move about independently. Human Rights Watch reported in July of that year that post-war insecurity left many women unable to leave their homes without a male family member to escort them, through their own or their families' reluctance. However, the stigmatization of victims of sexual violence was such that if a woman or girl required medical attention for this reason, informing a male family member so as to be escorted to the hospital could put her at risk of retaliatory violence from her family. Despite this danger, except in the three northern governorates under semi-autonomous Kurdish rule, there were still no centers or shelters where victims of sexual violence could go for help by July 2003.107 The postwar 2003 rise of conservative Islamist organizations put Iraqi women at risk of losing still more of the rights and freedoms that they had enjoyed during much of Saddam Hussein's rule, such as the right to receive an education, work, drive, vote, and hold political office (women's rights did not have constitutional protection under Saddam Hussein, however, and many were withdrawn during his last years in power--see below).108 Emboldened by the political chaos that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003, conservative students claiming to represent the Hawza, a council of religious Shiite clerics in Najaf, were reported to have posted notices around Mustansirriye University warning women to dress more conservatively and to wear the hijab in a more traditional fashion.109 85 new publications had appeared in Iraq by 1 May 2003, taking advantage of the freedom of expression brought about by the ouster of Saddam Hussein's government. A few women were among the newspaper editors, among them Ashtar Jassim al-Yasari, founder and editor of the satirical weekly Habez Bouz, and Ni'ma Abdulrazzaq, senior editor of the As-Saah newspaper. As well, a number of new women's magazines and an English-language Internet newsletter by and for women began to be published.110 The appointment in 2003, by the US military commander of the Shiite city of Najaf, of the city's first-ever female judge was met with protest by some of the city's lawyers--men and women both--and with negative fatwas from senior Shiite clerics. The swearing in of Nidal Nasser Hussein, who became the first female lawyer in Najaf in 1987, was indefinitely postponed due to the resentment against her nomination. A few of Najaf's judges supported the nomination of a woman judge, arguing that nothing in Iraq's legal code barred women from the judiciary. Opponents of the nomination claimed that Islamic law forbids women to be judges.111
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The World Bank Group's January 2004 "Interim Strategy Note of the World Bank Group for Iraq" outlined Iraq's status vis--vis the Millennium Development Goals. Regarding Goal Number Three--the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women--the report confirmed that the ratio of young literate females to males (ages 15 to 24) was about 50 percent, compared to 100 percent in Jordan and 60 percent in Yemen. Likewise, maternal mortality rates were exceedingly high at about 300 per 100,000 live births compared to Jordan and Yemen's 41 and 350, respectively. Sixty-five percent of births took place without trained medical assistance and outside of health facilities. The report estimated an increase in these delivering conditions by as much as 30 percent in urban areas and 40 percent in rural areas. 112 The Iraqi governing council voted to "cancel" Iraqi family laws and to move family issues from civil to religious jurisprudence, where they would be governed by sharia law. The vote, allegedly sponsored by Shia members of the Council, was narrowly won in a closed-door session. The decree could scale back legal protections that Iraqi women enjoyed even under Saddam Hussein, including prohibitions on child marriage, arbitrary divorce and male favouritism in child custody and inheritance disputes.113 However, the Coalition Provisional Authority refused to endorse the Council's decision because it would deprive women of their rights.114 In early February 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council agreed to put its controversial changes to the Personal Status Law on hold, after vocal and united opposition from Iraqi women's rights activists.115 Later that month, Resolution 137 was repealed altogether.116 In February 2004, many women in Basra said they had been forced to wear a veil or to restrict their movements in fear of harassment from men. According to female students at the University of Basra, after the war ended in April 2003, groups of men began stopping them at the university gates and harassing bare-headed women, telling them they are violating Islamic law. The men also harassed female students who were not dressed in loose-fitting clothes or who wore make-up. As of April 2004, nearly all women at the university were wearing a veil, including Christian Iraqis. Some students complained about the harassment to the CPA, but little was done to end it.117 Clauses protecting gender equality were included in Iraq's interim constitution (the "Transitional Administrative Law"), signed 8 March 2004. Of particular note are the following articles: Article 1 (B): "Gender specific language [in the document] shall apply equally to male and female" (Note: the masculine tense is used throughout). Article 12: "All Iraqis are equal in their rights without regard to gender, sect, opinion, 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 20 (B): "No Iraqi may be discriminated against for purposes of voting in elections on the basis of gender, religion, sect, race, belief, ethnic origin, language, wealth, or literacy." And Article 30 (C): "...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..."118 However the interim constitution was criticized by the New-York based Human Rights Watch because it "offers no explicit guarantee that women will have equal rights to marry, within marriage, and at its dissolution. It does not explicitly guarantee women the right to inherit on an equal basis with men. It fails to guarantee Iraqi women married to non-Iraqis the right to confer citizenship to their children."119 In April 2004, US officials announced plans to open a shelter for women who are victims of violence in Baghdad. The shelter, which will receive funding from the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, will be the first of its kind in the capital. The shelter will be able to assist 15-20
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women at a time, and will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Both male and female staff members are being trained to work at the shelter, and are already receiving calls every few days about women who have been subjected to abuse.120 The Iraqi interim government decided to reinstate the death penalty in August 2004. According to Amnesty International, the Iraqi policy contrasts the global movement to abolish the death penalty and would not result in greater security for Iraqis. The Iraqi government said it would resume executions for specific crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, and endangering national security.121 Iraqi women may be affected not only by being subject to capital punishment, but by the loss of a male bread-winner or head of household as a result of the policy. A February 2005 article in the American Prospect details the stories of women held at Abu Ghraib. According to a US Department of Defense statement, 42 women have been held in the prison, although none are currently interned there. Barry Johnson, a public-affairs officer of the US led forces in Iraq, stated that 90 women have been held in Iraqi detention centers since August 2003 and there are two "high-value" female detainees currently being held. In this article, Johnson has said, "Some women and children are picked up because they're a `security threat'." Johnson says. According to the article, some women are also detained because they are wives and sisters. The article outlines a potential class-action lawsuit being filed on behalf of some of the women detainees, which claims that human rights violations were committed by two private companies operating in the detention centers.122 A February 2005 report by Amnesty International (AI) suggests that perpetrators of violence against women and girls may have benefited from the lawlessness that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003, which led to many cases of violent crime not being prosecuted. Moreover, AI suggests that perpetrators of so-called "honour killings" may have received greater lenience by tribal justice mechanisms, whose role increased in the absence of a functioning judicial system.123 In a 23 January 2005 Human Rights Watch report on the Iraqi elections, they cautioned that security concerns and violence might have prevented Iraqi women from going to the polls. They stated "although all citizens will take a risk by exercising their right to vote, women are particularly vulnerable to attacks, abductions and sexual violence."124 On 20 May 2005, the US-based Freedom House released a comparative assessment of women's rights in the Middle East and North Africa, which also outlines policy recommendations to promote and strengthen women's rights. In Iraq, the study only assessed developments up to December 2003 due to the ongoing conflict, but also assessed the impact of decades of conflict on women's rights and freedoms. Iraq ranked between 2.1 and 2.8 out of 5 in the five categories under consideration. The study notes, as others have done, that women's freedom of movement and personal security have been limited by the conflict. It reports that: "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." The study further notes that more and more women are choosing to wear the hijab "to avoid harassment and to protect themselves in public". Among its recommendations are that Iraqi women be included in the constitution-making process, and that the Government and international organizations should train women in skills that will enable them to compete in the post-conflict economy.125 According to government officials and NGOs devoted to women's issues in Iraq, more than 90 women become widows each day due to continuing violence countrywide. The Ministry of
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Women's Affairs estimates that there are at least 300,000 widows in Baghdad alone, with another eight million throughout the country.126
Economic Security and Rights
According to a 2003 needs assessment by UNESCO, general insecurity in postwar Iraq made life difficult for working women. The Department of Antiquities reported that it was not recommended for female personnel working at architectural sites and museums to return home after 4pm without an escort. The short-term solution was to continue hiring UN buses to transport female museum staff to and/or from work so they could complete their work on the inventory of looted items. During the 2003 war, technical and vocational education (TVE) schools in south and central Iraq suffered extensive damage, the vast majority of which was due to looting and arson: 80% of laboratory equipment was looted or destroyed. Women made up less than 20% of student enrollment in vocational and technical schools between 1990 and 2001, and the extensive damage to TVE resources in 2003 further reduced women's chances of developing wage-earning skills.127 Under the sanctions regime of the 1990s, Iraq had a complex system of controlled prices. Morevoer, 60% of Iraqis had become dependent on the food rations of the Oil-for-Food Programme and did not have sufficient purchasing power in absence of food aid. The phasing out of the Oil-for-Food Programme combined with price liberalization in Iraq's transition to a market economy put at risk the economic security of the population, and specifically vulnerable groups such as women, children and the poor and unemployed, unless an adequate safety net is put in place during the transition. 128 According to the United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment, conducted over the summer of 2003, "women represent around 52% of Iraq's population, but constitute only 23% of the formal work force, mostly as middle level professionals in the public and service sectors and in rural areas as seasonal agricultural workers." At the time of the assessment, about 50% of the labour force in Iraq were unemployed or underemployed. Of those who were employed, some 60% worked in the informal sector, "many in marginalized economic activities, in difficult conditions and for minimal pay". The assessment warned that if this joblessness persisted, the large youth population (75% of Iraqis were under the age of 25 at the time of the assessment) could become "a source of serious instability". 129 The United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment identified the following as areas that need to be addressed in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq: women's economic empowerment, particularly for poor women, rural women and female heads of households; increasing Iraqi women's competitiveness in the labour market; decreasing the gender gap in education; raising women's awareness of effective preservation of natural resource; addressing women's particular needs and concerns in the shaping of socioeconomic and institutional policy frameworks; recognizing and utilizing women's capacities and skills so that they can benefit equally from jobs and opportunities for capacity building and education. 130 A Dubai telethon raised $2 million US dollars for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to help rehabilitate Iraq's devastated school infrastructure. Iraq's Ministry of Health reported that nearly 4,000 primary schools lack a safe water supply while over 7,000 have an inadequate sewage system. Recent World Bank statistics show that at least 25 percent of Iraqi primary school-age children do not attend school. UNICEF, which will use the money to provide school kits for students and rebuild schools throughout Iraq, hopes that enrollment and attendance rates for girls will improve as a result of the new moneys. As of September 2004, girls
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comprised 1.9 million of the 4.3 million primary school pupils. Boys and girls, however, lack security as a result of continued bombings and abductions.131 According to USAID's "Iraq Reconstruction Weekly Update" from 16 September 2004, USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives conferred a $246,000 grant to a group of Iraqi women who sought to renovate their hand-made carpet factory in south-central Iraq. The improved facility will function as a workplace and learning center. A grant of almost $100,000 was also given to a women's organization in south-central Iraq for the purchase of computers, equipment, furniture and supplies. As of mid-September OTI had awarded more than 60 grants totaling $3 million to help support the establishment of 14 women's centers in Iraq.132 The September 2004 "Baseline Food Security Analysis" conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) found that about a quarter of the Iraqi population was highly dependent on the Public Distribution System. The report noted, however, that food insecurity was still prevalent among Iraq's poorest households and that female-headed households particularly widows and women in general were more vulnerable to poverty, and therefore more susceptible to food insecurity. Statistically, 27.8% of female-headed households were found to be "extremely poor" compared to 13.4% of male-headed households. Moreover, more than half of adults in extremely poor households are unemployed, and more than 80% of these are women, and 36% of children living in extremely poor households are chronically malnourished.133
II. Before March 2003 II. Before March 2003
Political and Security Impact
Between 3 and 4 million Iraqis fled their country while it was under Baath Party rule. Relatives still in Iraq were arrested and harassed to convince refugees to return. In 2001, an estimated 2 million Iraqis were at risk of persecution if they returned, yet only about 300,000 were formally recognized as refugees or asylum seekers.134 There were 128,000 refugees from other countries (mainly Palestinians and Iranian Kurds) and 900,000 internally displaced persons in Iraq in 2003.135 Under Saddam Hussein, dissent by women was punished as brutally as dissent by men. Women and girls were harassed, imprisoned, tortured, beaten, raped, and executed as part of collective punishment meted out to relatives of alleged oppositionists of the Government of Iraq, for their own suspected dissidence, or even arbitrarily. Torture during detention was systematic. After release, former prisoners were often harassed and repeatedly re-incarcerated, and faced torture or execution for refusing to become informers for the government.136 Many women witnessed the execution of their children or were submitted to degrading treatment by Iraqi security services, believed to be the cause of suicide for some women. The Government of Iraq systematically used rape for political purposes. The Mukhabarat Technical Operations Directorate videotaped the rape of female relatives of suspected oppositionists and used the tapes for blackmail or coercion. This method of coercion took advantage of the stigma attached to victims of sexual violence in traditional Iraqi society--in which rape dishonours a whole family and victims of rape can be beaten or killed by their relatives to wipe out the stigma--to inhibit oppositionists from reporting the abuse. To extract confessions from male prisoners, their female relatives were taken into custody, and then tortured, raped, or
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even killed in front of the prisoners. Women suffered severe psychological trauma, unwanted pregnancies, and miscarriages after being raped by Iraqi security forces or soldiers.137 Iraqi women whose husbands or male relatives had been arrested, executed, or had fled persecution reported to the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights that following the men's absence, they suffered abuse and intimidation from the government including the withdrawal of ration cards (and therefore food and medicine), cuts to electricity, expropriation of property, house searches, questioning, threats, and arrest. 138 Widows of executed prisoners were required by the government to pay the cost of execution and bullets in order to recover the (often mutilated) bodies of their loved ones.139 From 1987 to 1989, the government of Iraq waged a war of eradication against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The centerpiece of what has been called genocide by Human Rights Watch, among others, was the 1987-1988 Anfal campaign, nominally a counterinsurgency operation but in reality a carefully planned and executed programme of ethnic cleansing in which 50,000200,000 people are estimated to have been killed, most of them men and adolescent boys. Although "battle-age" men were Anfal's primary target and were disappeared and killed en masse--creating a population with an "unusually high" percentage of women in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq140--thousands of Kurdish women and girls also died. In some regions, especially those in which Iraqi troops met armed resistance, large numbers of women and children were among those killed in mass summary executions, and were among the tens of thousands of noncombatants who were "disappeared". Kurdish women of all ages were among the thousands of people killed as a result of the widespread and indiscriminate use of chemical weapons against Kurdish towns and villages. Tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people were arbitrarily warehoused for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, in which many were allowed to die. And hundreds of thousands of women and their families were forcibly displaced as a result of the demolition of their homes and villages, some 2,000 of which were completely destroyed. Rape was also among the weapons used against Kurdish women during the Anfal campaign.141 Tens of women participated in the Kurdish uprising of 1991.142 During and after the 1991 Shia uprising, the government of Iraq committed widespread human rights abuses against suspected Shia oppositionists in southern Iraq. A 2003 survey by Physicians for Human Rights of women and men from more than 2,000 households (conducted by women and men) yielded over 1,000 individual reports of abuses, which included disappearances, kidnappings, torture, sexual assault of women, forced amputation of ears, and killings. Few women torture survivors were willing to come forward and tell their story. At least one woman's family blamed her for the arrest, which they said she could have avoided had followed their advice, and they have since refused to speak with her. Interviews with torture survivors found clear evidence of long-lasting trauma and desperation.143 In 1996 the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan established the Peshmerga Force for Women, which now has over 300 fighters. Women who join the force are trained in attack, ambush, sabotage, and learning to use weapons. The women's peshmerga force has participated in frontline combat in battles against Ansar al-Islam, a fringe Kurdish Islamist group alleged to have links to Al Qaeda.144 The government's decreased spending in the 1990s reduced municipal services such as garbage collection, degrading living conditions and the availability of potable water, and thus disproportionately affecting women, whose work and responsibilities are home-based much more
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than men's and include providing food and water for their families. Frustration at the degradation of living conditions resulted in increased vandalism, creating a less secure climate in domestic neighbourhoods.145 The Fedayeen Saddam militia publicly beheaded at least 130 (and up to 2000) women from June 2000 to April 2001 on charges of prostitution, which was decreed a crime punishable by death during the 1990s. While some of the women may have been prostitutes, most were associated, either through family connections or personally, with some sort of opposition to the government. According to one report, among the women beheaded were two television presenters and 80 gyncologists and midwives. The heads were often left on the doors or doorsteps of the women's families, who were required to display them in public view.146 Direct and indirect civilian and military casualties from and in the year directly following the 1991 Gulf War have been estimated at 205,500, including more than 39,000 women and 32,000 children. Postwar deaths have been attributed to war-related damage to medical facilities and supplies, the electric power grid, and the water system.147 In 2001, Amnesty International declared Iraq to have the world's worst record of disappearances. In 2003, the UN Secretary-General reported that, "over the past three decades, at least 290,000 Iraqis from all religious groups, ethnic groups, political affiliations, classes and Kidnappings of women, mostly the wives and daughters of professions disappeared."148 dissidents, were reported across Iraq. The women were said to be at the service of their kidnappers and senior government officials.149
Political Participation
The 1958 revolution heralded an increase in Iraqi women's political rights. Iraqi women engaged in politics, and for the first time in Iraq's history a woman became a minister.150 In 1960, a woman became Minister of State (without Portfolio). She was the only member of Abdel Karim Qasim's government, formed after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, to belong to the Communist Party.151 In 1970, the Iraqi Provisional Constitution formally guaranteed equal rights to women. Other laws specifically ensured their right to vote and run for political office.152 A robust civil society that included women's organizations existed prior to the 1968 coup d'tat by the Baath Party, which dismantled most of these groups and in their place established the General Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW). The GFIW played a significant role in implementing state policy, and some of its officers also played a role in implementing legal reforms and lobbying for changes to improve women's status. However, some Iraqi women have argued that the GFIW was not representative of Iraqi women and in fact, as part of the Baath Party, was actually destructive to women's empowerment. 153 During the 1990s, the semi-autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan allowed women to take great political strides forward. In 2003, two of the 20 ministers in the Kurdistan Regional Government were women, and women occupied numerous posts among ministry staff.154 Iraqi women ran in Iraq's first parliamentary elections in 1980 and won 16 of 250 seats on the National Council. In the second parliamentary elections in 1985, women won 33 Council
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seats (13%). The next eighteen years saw a dramatic decrease in Iraqi women's participation in politics to 8% of seats in pre-war 2003.155 In the 1990s, official decisions on the part of the central Government limited women's access to senior decision-making positions. Restrictions on movement and illiteracy also contributed to women's low participation in political life.156
Humanitarian Impact 157
Hundreds of thousands of women belonging to Iraq's ethnic and religious minorities (including Kurds, Assyrians, Shia and Maadan or Marsh Arabs) were displaced with their families under various programmes of the government of Iraq. 1.5 million Kurds fled to Turkey after a failed uprising against the government in 1991. When Shia oppositionists fled to the marshes of southern Iraq after the violent suppression of their 1991 uprising, government forces burned and bombed villages and diverted water from the marshes to force a total depopulation of the marshlands. A 2000 estimate by the US Committee for Refugees put the number of internally displaced men, women, and children from and in southern Iraq at 100,000.158 And thousands of families, and even entire communities, were displaced by force from their homes and relocated within or expelled from the country in the Baathist government's long-term project of "Arabization".159 In 1999, the Iraqi Interior Ministry expelled 4,000 families (some 24,000 people) from Baghdad: opposition sources claimed that most of the expelled families were Kurds and Shia, that many had lived in the neighborhood where an anti-government riot had taken place in February 1999. 160 The severe economic decline in Iraq brought about by the combination of debts accumulated during the Iran-Iraq War, destruction wrought by the 1991 Gulf War, and a decade of international sanctions caused Iraq to experience one of the most rapid declines in living conditions ever recorded. Iraq fell from 96/160 in 1991 to 126/174 in 2000 on the UNDP Human Development Index, which includes some gender-desegregated indicators. No other country has ever fallen so far, so fast. The impact of this decline on women included increased mortality rates; increased rates of divorce, polygamy, and domestic violence; decreased marriage rates; a significant increase in malnutrition among women and children; and an added burden of responsibility as women had to care for children traumatized by war, disease, and malnutrition with neither professional support nor sufficient access to knowledge and skills.161
Impact on Food, Water and Sanitation Infrastructure
Women who fled Iraq to neighboring countries as a result of conflict and repression in an effort to save their own and their families' lives found themselves unable to afford basic necessities such as food and medical care.162 Under the economic sanctions put in place following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, a Public Food Distribution System was put in place throughout south and central Iraq. This food ration system prevented mass starvation and malnutrition, but was not able to ensure adequate nutrition to most of the population. Even under the Oil-for-Food Programme, more than 50% of the population was vulnerable to food insecurity. Although the Iraqi agricultural sector began to decline in the 1980s, untargeted food rations also had a negative impact on domestic agricultural productivity.163
Impact on Health and Health Services
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During the 1991 Gulf War, up to 800 tons of munitions containing depleted uranium were used by US forces, the first field test of such weapons in actual combat. Cancer rates, congenital anomalies and disabilities among children and animals significantly increased in areas where the war was fought. It was thought that depleted uranium had found its way into the water supply. For two years following the 1991 Gulf War, there was an increase in miscarriages and pregnancy complications among women in the Gulf states, thought to be the result of chemicals leaking from weapons into the food chain, smoke-pollution from the oil fields, or conflict-related stress.164 Iraq's dual-use electrical grid, as well as other elements of its civilian infrastructure, was targeted during the 1991 Gulf War. The result was a recurrence of preventable water-borne illnesses, such as typhoid, gastroenteritis and cholera, especially among the most vulnerable members of the population (women, children and the elderly).165 Starting in May 1991, the US and UK flew more than 280,000 sorties over Iraq's no-fly zones. In addition to killing civilians when bombs missed the military installations they were said to be intended for, the threat of daily attacks created psychological problems, including anxiety, depression, insomnia, weight loss, and fears of losing friends and family, among Iraqi women and children.166 A 1991 survey, funded in part by UNICEF and conducted by a team of international doctors, found that the Gulf War combined with trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality among Iraqi children under five, an increase corresponding to an excess of 46,900 child deaths in the seven months after the war.167 During the 1990's, female-headed households, rural areas, and poor households had the highest rates of infant and child mortality.168 Before the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had one of the best health systems in the Middle East region, enjoying health conditions similar to those of other middle or high-middle income countries, and had low rates of malnutrition. The government estimated that between 79% of rural populations and 97% of urban populations had access to health care.169 Under the effects of the 1991 Gulf War and over a decade of economic sanctions, Iraq's health system declined so much that health outcomes in Iraq became the region's poorest, and health indicators dropped to levels seen in some of the world's least developed countries. By 2003, Iraqis in several regions were at risk of endemic malaria, cholera and leishmaniasis, as well as from vaccine preventable diseases like measles and diptheria. Iraq's risk of tuberculosis was the region's highest. The physical health infrastructure had deteriorated after years of underinvestment compounded by sanctions, and Iraq had a shortage of trained health personnel.170 A United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reproductive health survey published in August 2003 found that the number of women who die of pregnancy and childbirth nearly tripled between 1989 and 2002, from 117 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1989 to 310 deaths in 2003. Bleeding, ectopic pregnancies and prolonged labour were found to be among the causes of the rise in maternal mortality. A concurrent rise in miscarriages was attributed partly to stress and exposure to chemical contaminants.171 More than half of Iraqi women became anmic as a result of a health system badly damaged by conflict and sanctions. A rise in the incidence of low birth weights from 25 percent in 2001 to 30 percent in 2002 shows that women's health was still in decline due to poverty and poor nutrition.172
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Impact on Human Rights, including Violence Against Women
In February 2003, the Special Rapporteur for violence against women reported that the Iraqi government had put laws in place to protect women from workplace exploitation and from sexual harassment; to permit women to join the army and police forces; and, to equalize women's rights in divorce, land ownership, taxation, and suffrage. The Special Rapporteur noted the difficulty of determining the true extent to which these protections are implemented. 173 In 1970, the Baath Party passed a new constitution that nominally made Iraqi women and men equal under the law, although family law continued to favour men. In the early years of Saddam Hussein's government, women won the right to receive an education, to vote, and to work outside the home, and the national legal code was revised to prohibit sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace. After the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War, however, women's rights were eroded by Hussein's attempts to win legitimacy in the face of Iraq's economic crisis by appeasing religious fundamentalists and other conservatives. Antiwoman legislation became more common.174 In 1990, Article 111 of the Iraqi Penal Code exempted from prosecution and punishment men who killed their female relatives in defense of their family's honour. Human rights groups estimate that since the law became effective, 4,000 women have fallen victim to it. Article 41 of the penal code authorized husbands to beat their wives for educational purposes. And as a result of another decree, a woman who asked for too much gold jewelry could be punished by her husband with 80 lashes of the whip.175 From the mid 1980's on, women were denied posts as judges or public prosecutors. 176 Laws in Iraqi Kurdistan, which are based on Islamic Sharia law and tribal custom, for forty years legalized an inferior status for women and sanctioned honour killings, resulting in women's harassment, degradation, imprisonment, physical abuse (including mutilation), and the murder of up to 5,000 women.177 In 2000, Kurdish authorities suspended Article 111 of the Iraqi Penal Code, but according to women's rights groups honour killings were still prevalent throughout the north despite the suspension.178 According to the Sulaymaniyah-based Rewan Women's Information and Cultural Centre (RWICC), suicide rates among Iraqi women were high: RWICC recorded 119 cases in 2002. One of the preferred methods was self-immolation. Media and aid agencies in the Kurdish-controlled northern governorates tried to prevent such suicides by publicizing the problem and by establishing shelters to assist women in need. In contrast, no data exist for the same time period for the South of Iraq, indicating that there was no assistance for women suffering from domestic violence in that region.179 After its establishment in 2001, Ansar al-Islam, a small but radical Kurdish Islamist group in northern Iraq with alleged ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, razed beauty salons, burned down girls' schools, and murdered women in the street for not wearing burqas.180 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) militias shut down a women's rights organization and a women's shelter in July 2000, imprisoning the staff and the shelter residents. Honour killings and violence against women rose after the shelter was closed.181 A decree from the central government forbade women under 45 to leave Iraq without a male relative to escort them. The extra financial burden of having an escort made foreign travel impossible for many women. In 1999, all students were banned from foreign travel. The children of Iraqi fathers and foreign-born mothers were prevented from visiting the country of their other
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nationality. Foreign spouses of Iraqi citizens were forced to apply for naturalization as citizens, thus becoming subject to travel restrictions placed only on women. 182 Illiteracy among women, which had been drastically reduced in the 1970s, rose steadily after the Iran-Iraq War; it quadrupled between 1985 and 1995, from 8 percent to 45 percent. Girls' education was severely affected during the 90s, with the drop out rate for primary school girls rising to 35 percent. The UNDP rated Iraq 126/174 on the 2002 Gender Development Index, and its Human Development Report 2002 found Iraq "far behind" in the targets to eliminate gender disparity at all levels of education.183
Economic Security and Rights
A 1974 government decree stipulated that all university graduates, male and female, would be employed automatically.184 The 1991 Gulf War had devastating effects on Iraq's economic and civilian infrastructure. Women bore the brunt of the economic collapse. By 1997, only 10% of women were involved in economic activities.185 The number of female-headed households increased due to the large number of "Anfal widows" in the northern governorates and women throughout Iraq whose husbands were killed by the government of Iraq; women, especially in rural areas, increased their workload and took on work traditionally done by men to meet their high economic need; the number of working mothers, child labourers, and street children increased; the combination of a drastically devalued currency and fixed salaries reduced purchasing power, resulting, for many women, in poverty; and women became overwhelmed by their daily struggle to meet even the most basic needs (food and water) for their children.186 Prior to 1991, Iraqi women had the highest rate of employment in the Arab Region, constituting 23 percent of the country's work force. Women's actual economic contribution in the informal economy, especially in the agriculture sector, was believed to be even higher. Most working women were mid-level professionals, mainly in the public sector. Under economic sanctions, women's share in public sector employment--which provided relative economic security--increased as men left in search of better opportunities in the private or informal sectors. Home based income-generating activities for women also increased as a result of the deteriorating standards of living in general. The general rise in unemployment, however, meant that by 2002, women comprised only 19 percent of the national workforce.187 During the Iraq-Iran war the number of working women increased as men were sent to the front and many widows had to support families. Many women moved into high-level jobs in usually male-dominated sectors, such as the military, the oil industry, construction, and government jobs in medicine, education, accounting, and administration.188 The slaughter of tens of thousands of Kurdish men during the Anfal campaign created thousands of widows in a society that can stigmatize women without spouses. Kurdish women, many suffering physical and psychological trauma, were left to rebuild their communities with almost no aid, care, or financial compensation following Anfal. The widows, daughters, and mothers of the Anfal Campaign victims were reported in 2000 to be economically dependent on their relatives or villages because they may not inherit the property or assets of their missing family members.189
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In the 1990s, the breakdown of the welfare state had a disproportionate effect on women, who were its main beneficiaries. Women were pushed out of the workforce when the services were withdrawn that had allowed them to work outside the home, including free education, child-care, and transportation. The high unemployment in manufacturing also reduced women's access to work by displacing male workers into fields traditionally occupied by women.190 As a result of the limited autonomy that Kurds in the three northern governorates (Iraqi Kurdistan) enjoyed from the central government, and its the direct distribution of UN and international aid, Kurdish women were able to move into numerous professions, including many traditionally dominated by men including government, ministry, engineering, and law.191 Women made desperately poor by years of conflict and sanctions were increasingly reduced to prostitution as a means of survival. In the 1990s, prostitution was made a crime punishable by death.192 In the decade between 1989/1990 and 2000/2001, enrolment in vocational and technical schools fell by nearly 56%. During that time, women represented fewer than 20% of students in vocational and technical schools, and there were "significant gender disparities across subject fields". 193 Iraq's electrical infrastructure had been severely damaged during the 1991 Gulf War. By 1999, generation capacity may have risen to 65% of its pre-war levels. Power was rationed throughout the country, with Baghdad receiving disproportionately more. In pre-war 2003, some parts of the country had electricity for less than 12 hours per day. Women's electricity use is incurred mostly in domestic work, and in informal home-based work, and thus lack of power in that sector could increase women's burden of care and affect earnable income. 194
W o m e n ''s P e a c e B u iilld iin g A c t iiv iit iie s iin I r a q Women s Peace Bu d ng Act v t es n Iraq I. Before March 2003: I. Before March 2003:
Informal grassroots business schemes were set up by Iraqi women to alleviate the poverty brought about by decades of conflict and international sanctions. These include food catering and the recycling of clothes and other materials, as well as trade, contracting and subcontracting to the state, owning garages, and hired seasonal labour in field work, food processing, and construction. Women also produce goods for sale in their homes and sell some products in the marketplace, which they did not do before 1990.195 Dozens of women's organizations emerged in Iraq's three northern governorates (under semi-autonomous Kurdish rule) during the 1990s. Peace-building actions by Kurdish women activists include a two-hundred kilometer march from Suleimanya to Erbil to protest the fratricidal conflict between the PKK and the KDP, and the successful amendment of several discriminatory clauses in the Iraqi Civil Code in the semi-autonomous northern governorates.196 From February 20-22, 1992, under the auspices of the Kurdistan Women's Union, 177 women representing the three northern governorates and all parts of Kurdish society participated in the "Martyr Layla Qassim" conference under the slogan "Peace, Freedom, Equality, and Justice". The conference called for more inclusive participation of women at all levels in Iraqi Kurdistan, for the modernization of health services for women, for the lifting of economic sanctions from Iraq,
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and for the Security Council to change the latitude of the Kurdish self-rule area and northern nofly zone so that all Iraqi Kurds would receive the same UN protection.197 In 1992, women activists created the Independent Women's Organization in response to the high levels of violence against women in the Kurdish self-rule area, which included harassment, physical violence, mutilation, and the murder of more than 5,000 women. They campaigned to repeal anti-woman legislation in the northern governorates, and to end impunity for so-called "honour killings". In 1998, they established a Women's Shelter in Suleimaniya. When the shelter was closed by the PUK and twelve of its residents abducted with their children, the women of the IWO sent out a written appeal for support to "all Women, Human Rights and Progressive Organizations".198 Hundreds of women and children demonstrated in front of a United Nations office in Baghdad on 24 March 1997 to appeal for the release of Iraqi prisoners captured by Iran during the 1980-88 Gulf War.199 With funding from the Oil-for-Food Programme, nearly 400 literacy centres for women, focusing particularly on the needs of adolescent women, were established in Iraqi Kurdistan with help from the Kurdistan Women's Union. The programme's goal was to provide a solid academic foundation that would allow women to later pursue post-secondary education.200 In July 2000, two gender and development training workshops were held in Arbil (3-6 July) and Sulaymania (8-11 July). The workshops included lectures and practical exercises, and covered various aspects of the different relationships that arise between men and women, including reasons why these relationships may become imbalanced and ways to improve them in order to empower women economically, socially, and politically. The workshops were organized by the Iraqi Al-Amal Association in collabouration with the Machreq/Maghreb Gender Linking & Information Project.201 On 11 March 2001, Iraqi women participated in a symposium in Baghdad to analyse the situation of women in Iraq and to highlight their role in different sectors of Iraqi society. The symposium was sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme.202 In an unprecedented display of spontaneous public dissent, dozens of anguished women and angry young men, nearly all of them Shia, took to the streets in Baghdad on 22 October 2002 demanding information about relatives jailed for political crimes who did not return home after the amnesty granted by Saddam Hussein to all of Iraq's prisoners, including non-Iraqi Arabs, with the exception of those accused of spying for the United States or Israel..203 Groups of Iraqi women in exile, coordinated through the Iraqi Women's League, issued appeals to foreign governments and organized demonstrations, hoping to ensure that women's voices be heard and the needs of the vulnerable populations be met in the crucial early phases of Iraq's reconstruction.204
II. After March 2003 II. After March 2003
In March 2003, women's rights activists and organizations in London, England, founded the Iraqi Women's Rights Coalition in order to streamline their efforts to influence the policymaking of the new government in Iraq, and to ensure that women's equal rights be secured and enshrined in a secular constitution. These women use the Coalition as a vehicle for media publicity, to facilitate meetings with government officials and human rights and humanitarian
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organizations, and to network with peer organizations in the European Union. Coalition members established women's advocacy centers in Iraq in order to raise Iraqi women's awareness of the international standards of women's rights. They also established shelters to protect Iraqi women from domestic violence. In March 2003, the Kurdish Women Action Against Honour Killing sent an open letter to the UN, the US, and the European Union, expressing their concern that women were not being adequately represented and that their roles and rights were not being addressed by the prewar Iraqi opposition, and demanding women's full participation in the future government of Iraq.205 On 21-22 April 2003, 25 Iraqi women participated in the conference "Winning the Peace: Women's Role in Post-Conflict Iraq" in Washington, DC. Hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Women Waging Peace, the conference brought Iraqi women representing government, professions, civil society and the diaspora from different political, ethnic and religious groups together with more than 60 experts from NGOs and key international and American aid agencies. Conference participants identified the urgent needs and potential contributions of Iraqi women and offered a number of conclusions on ways to integrate women into post-war reconstruction. These included involving women in the earliest drafting of key instruments to ensure protection for women's rights; guaranteeing at least 30% representation by women in all committees, bodies and structures convened to advance reconstruction; and ensuring an inclusive and participatory approach to governance that promotes greater civil society involvement.206 In April 2003, the Iraqi Women League sent a letter to Clare Short, UK Secretary of State for International Development, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss issues of particular concern to Iraqi women regarding the country's reconstruction, and outlining those issues.207 In May/June 2003, women's networks in Afghanistan and Kosovo sent open letters to the women of Iraq, outlining their struggles to be heard in the reconstruction processes in their own countries, and urging Iraqi women to raise their voices and ensure that they play a significant role in the rebuilding of postwar Iraq.208 On 3 July 2003, hundreds of women demonstrated in Baghdad, demanding to be included in shaping the political future of the country.209 On 9 July 2003, more than 80 women from all parts of Iraq participated in the "Voice of Iraqi Women" conference in Baghdad--the first national women's conference since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government. Conference participants discussed strategies for how to increase women's role in the recovery and reconstruction of Iraq, including the status of women in the constitution, legislation, the democratic process, education, the health system, the economy, and social and cultural affairs. The main conference also brought together Iraqi women who had remained in Iraq under the dictatorship, women from the diaspora, and women from the three Kurdish governorates who, for over ten years, were able to promote the participation of women in the emerging civil society. Representatives of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and several United Nations agencies also attended the conference discussions.210 One of the three women on Iraq's Governing Council, Aqila al-Hashimi, was among the three members of the Iraqi interim administration who participated in the Security Council on 17 July 2003. Part of the discussion within the Security Council focused on the necessity of including women at all levels of leadership of Iraq and in the country's recovery and reconstruction. Sergio Vieira de Mello, who had met with women's organizations among others to identify ways in which to make the UN contribution to Iraq's recovery and reconstruction most effective, noted that,
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among the three areas of particular concern regarding human rights in Iraq, special emphasis should be placed on ensuring the rights of women.211 From 4-7 October 2003, the Heartland of Iraq Women's Conference, sponsored by USAID and the CPA, was held at the University of Babylon in Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad.212 Over 150 women of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds attended from the five south-central provinces of Babil, Karbala, Najaf, Diwaniya and Wasit. Among the attendees were women who are working to establish women's centers and organizations in these provinces. The conference also hosted visiting women's delegations from Basra and Kurdistan. Ala Talabani (from Kirkuk), a long-time dissident against the former government who is now a liaison between women's groups, the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council, chaired the conference.213 The idea to create a Higher Council for Women was generated at the conference, and realized later that month with British support.214 On 8 October, two of the speakers at the Heartland of Iraq Women's Conference, Safia al-Souhail and Rend el-Rahim, were nominated to replace the late Akila Hashemi on the Iraqi Governing Council. 215 On 13 November 2003, 17 senior Iraqi women leaders took part in a conference in Washington, DC Building a New Iraq: Women's Role in Reconstruction alongside experts from the US Departments of State and Defense, the World Bank, USAID and NGOs.216 Conference participants drafted a list of recommendations for strengthening women's role in civil society, constitutional law and legislation, democracy, governance and decision-making, economic rights and empowerment, and security and security reform.217 sector In November 2003, Dr. Raja Habib Dhahir Khuzai, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council addressed the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace in Washington, describing how she came to be nominated to this transitional body by the CPA, as well as her experience as one of three women Councillors.218 Raja Habib Khuzai and Songul Chapouk, the two women on the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on 3 December 2003. They note that women "are severely underrepresented in the leadership established for the transition [to democracy] and call for the IGC and the CPA to "ensure women their rightful place at the decision-making table".219 From 7-14 December, 25 Iraqi men and women participated in a meeting in Amman, Jordan Guaranteeing Women a Role in Iraq: Translating Experiences from Abroad220 sponsored by the World Bank, UNIFEM, Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace and Women for Women International. Participants discussed women's economic rights and the use of international treaties to advance women's advocacy in Iraq, among other topics. In addition, three international experts shared their experience and advice on peacebuilding.221 In mid-December 2003, a group of prominent women's rights activists and organizations in Iraq sent a letter to Ambassadors Bremer, Greenstock and the members of the Iraqi Governing Council to call attention to the gender-based discrimination that Iraqi women have faced under the Coalition Provisional Authority.222 Iraqi women mounted a nation-wide campaign to repeal Resolution 137 of the Iraqi Governing Council, which cancelled the 1959 Personal Status Law and placed issues of family law, including marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance, under religious rather than civil jurisdiction
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(Resolution 137). Iraqi women held massive street protests and conferences to denounce the resolution.223 Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, more than 80 women's organizations have been formed in Baghdad alone, offering a new space for dialogue and empowerment for women. According to Nesreen Berwari, Iraqi Minister for Municipalities and Public Works, NGOs have also been holding "discussion groups" with women across the country to generate interest in the democratic process and inform women of the importance of registering to vote.224 Iraqi women campaigned vigorously to ensure a 40% quota for women's representation in the country's interim constitution. From February 2004 onwards, the Advising Committee for Women Affairs in Iraq (formerly the Women Experts Committee), headed by Nesreen Berwari (Iraq's only female Minister), held weekly meetings to organize a campaign for demands on quota of 40% representation by women in the Transitional Council, constitutional committee, and caucuses.225 According to Berwari, "For Iraq to move forward faster it is essential for women to play stronger contributing roles. Women need to have opportunities to more actively participate in decision-making. In order for this to occur, an enabling environment to promote women's participation needs to be enshrined within the fundamental law of administration." 226 However, the CPA and some members of the Iraqi Governing Council were strongly opposed to the establishment of any explicit quota. In the end, a "target" of 25% was included in the Transitional Administrative Law, signed 8 March 2004.227 The Iraqi Women's Higher Council held three women's conferences in the Centre, North and South of Iraq between October 2003 and January 2004. The Basra Southern Women's Conference, held 28-29 January 2004 and sponsored by the CPA, included a petition campaign to collect signatures supporting women's demands for political participation and for this to be stated in the fundamental law to be released on 28 February 2004. The Basra conference was attended by about 220 women from across Iraq.228 An April 2004 article in "Women's E-News" described how women in Iraq were responding to the new rights and opportunities that became available to them with the fall of former President Saddam Hussein. These efforts were constrained, however, by an uncertain security situation in which women had been attacked, had received death threats and had even been killed in the course of their work. Many believed that the women who had been thus threatened or harmed were targeted because of their work on women's rights or their association with occupying forces. 229 On 30 April 2004, nine women delegates met with Ambassador L. Paul Bremer to discuss their concern over the success of the political process during the transitional period following the transfer of sovereignty (planned for 30 June 2004). The group was comprised of the Vice-Minister for Culture, a representative of UNIFEM and representatives of women's organizations in Iraq (including Women Without Borders, the Al Amal Association, the IWN, the ACWAI, the Assyrian Women's Union, and the Women's and Children's Union Baghdad). Among the issues they raised were the deterioration of security in Iraq and its effect on democracy, violations of human rights and especially women's human rights, the excessive use of force by the military against civilians and possibilities for women's participation in peace processes and transitional institutions.230 An Action Alert issued in May 2004 by the Women Waging Peace (WWP) suggested alternative approaches for the Iraqi Independent Elections Commission to foster women's inclusion throughout the electoral process. WWP suggested that political parties nominate a certain percentage of female candidates. Election laws would mandate that women were positioned at or near the top of ballots. A percentage of seats would be allocated for women;
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parallel elections for women and men would be mandated. Voting requirements would call for all voters to elect both men and women. Seats within governing bodies would be reserved for women appointees. WWP emphasized the importance of women's inclusion in all stages of the Commission's work because "they are central to the design and implementation of national elections. Women should be integrated as resources in the Commission's activities and not marginalized in the process."231 From 16-17 June 2004, Iraqi women's organizations convened a national women's conference in Baghdad to encourage women's participation in the democratic process. The conference brought together 350 women from across the country to discuss such issues as women in decision-making, human security and women's participation in the upcoming election.232 Conference participants demanded, inter alia, that armed groups be disarmed and members of US-led forces responsible for human rights violations be brought to justice, that support be made available to women survivors of family violence and that women be equally represented in education, employment and political decision-making.233 On 23 June 2004, Nisreen Berwari, Minister for Municipalities and Public Works, and Ala Talabani, co-founder of Women for Free Iraq and the Iraqi Women's High Council and former vice president of the Kurdistan Women's Union, were interviewed on OnPoint for Boston public radio (WBUR.org) about women's representation and inclusion in post-war Iraq.234 Both women are members of the Waging Network, a group of peace builders linked by Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace, an initiative of the Hunt Alternatives Fund.235 In May 2000 a private home-care facility was established for disabled and elderly women in the Karrada district of Baghdad, IRIN reported. Functioning as a charity, Bethany House houses about fifteen women, most of whom are elderly and have been abandoned by their children. Resident-patients are taken care of by elderly women, and some doctors volunteer their time. Since the outbreak of conflict in 2003, the facility has struggled with the gap between limited medical resources and an increase in the number of women needing care, including war-wounded patients coming in off the streets.236
W h a t U N I F E M iis d o iin g iin I r a q What UNIFEM s do ng n Iraq
UNIFEM has been a close partner of the National Committee for the Advancement of Iraqi Women to assess progress and to develop a national strategy to accelerate the implementation of their mandate consistent with the Beijing Platform for Action. UNIFEM also worked towards strengthening the capacity of relevant national entities responsible for the generation of gender desegregated data and information. UNIFEM has been working in Iraq since 2001. UNIFEM took part in the UNICEF-organized workshop, "Monitoring and Implementation of CEDAW", held in Iraq from 29 April to 2 May 2001. The workshop's objective was to strengthen the capacity of the National Committee for the Advancement of Iraqi Women and NGOs in their monitoring of Iraq's implementation of CEDAW. To put the workshop's objectives into effect, UNIFEM, with UNDP and Iraq's Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, in June 2001 initiated the project "Support to the National Committee for the Advancement of Iraqi Women". In August, Dr. Haifa Abu Ghazaleh (Regional Programme Director of the Arab States Regional Office) headed a mission to launch the project's activities in Baghdad, in collaboration with the General Federation of Iraqi Women and the National Committee and its member organizations. The project's goals are: to build the capacity of the National Committee as it implements the strategic objectives outlined in Beijing Platform for Action and as it assesses progress, formulates gender policies, and recommends priorities for accelerating the
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implementation of the National Strategy for the Advancement of Iraqi Women; to introduce a gender perspective in the data collection, analysis, and dissemination processes; and to strengthen the national entities responsible for the generation of gender-desegregated data and information so that the gender perspective is institutionalized. Under the Hussein government, UNIFEM was involved in assisting Iraqi women through the General Federation of Iraqi Women by providing the resources and materials needed by the Federation to build a gender resource base. On 21 March 2003, UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer urged the international community to take into account, in its efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Iraq during and after the conflict, the disparate impact of armed conflict on women. On behalf of UNIFEM, she called on all parties to adhere to international legal standards, especially those that outlaw the use of indiscriminate weapons, deliberate targeting of civilians, and sexual or gender violence. She also called on the international community to recognize the rights of Iraqi women to participate in all decision-making about the future of their society. Starting in April 2003, the UNIFEM Arab States Regional Office moderated an electronic discussion on the impact of armed conflict on Iraqi women through its Arab Women Connect website.237 The worsening security situation, the bombing of the UN in August 2003, and the subsequent reduction of UN presence in Baghdad hindered women's organizing, including the intended nation-wide women's consultations planned by UNIFEM and UNDP for August. Despite these difficult circumstances, UNIFEM has been carrying out regional on-the-ground consultations with Iraqi women, UN agencies and NGOs to assess immediate needs and priorities. UNIFEM, with UNDP, planned a symposium that would bring together women from across Iraq to discuss postwar recovery and reconstruction and to consult on the National Strategy on the Advancement of Women, however the meeting was postponed after the August 2003 attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad. UNIFEM and UNDP altered their plan in light of the security situation to conduct a series of smaller regional meetings rather than one large symposium. UNIFEM supported the Ministry of Women's Affairs in organizing the first National Symposium for Iraqi Women when it was able to be held in October 2004. The symposium, which brought together women and men from all levels of society, created an opportunity for participants to feed into the draft national strategy for the advancement of Iraqi women and will support the creation of a common platform for action on gender issues.238 UNIFEM participated in the Needs Assessment process conducted in the summer of 2003 by the United Nations on 14 key sectors in Iraq, circulating a briefing paper and a checklist239 and on the gender components of each sector that the 14 teams would address. Gender was one of three cross-cutting issues in each sector. 240 Through visits to Iraq and in collaboration with the growing number of emerging women's organizations in Iraq, UNIFEM helped to identify Iraqi women who have begun to organize for the reconstruction and rebuilding process, consulted with the Coalition Provisional Authority, coordinated with UN and other agencies working in the field and finally, worked with a receptive Office of the United Nations Special Representative in Iraq succeeded in putting gender issues on the reconstruction agenda.241 In July 2003, UNIFEM began close collaboration with the growing number of women's organizations that were organizing for reconstruction and the rebuilding process. Despite the very real threats posed by continuing violence, Iraqi women persisted in their efforts to participate in
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and influence the reform process, including constitutional and legislative reform, by holding regional meetings, conducting concerted advocacy campaigns, meeting with the UN envoy and Elections Advisory Team, and striving to increase nominations by women for posts in the transitional cabinet and the Independent Electoral Commission. Some examples of the positive results of Iraqi women's advocacy during this reporting period have included: (1) overturning the Iraqi Governing Council's controversial Resolution 137, (which would have "cancelled" Iraqi family laws and moved family issues from civil to religious jurisprudence, where they would be governed by Sharia law); and (2) obtaining language on gender equality and a 25% goal for women's legislative representation enshrined in the Transitional Administrative Law.242 With UNIFEM support, the Iraqi Women's Network held a meeting on 30 March at which representatives from women's NGOs set a common agenda for women's participation in the elections processes. UNIFEM also acted as a broker to enable local women's groups to advocate for their agenda to the UN system, including Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General, and Ms. Carla Perelli's Elections Advisory Team. UNIFEM arranged meetings with Iraqi women for Mr. Brahimi and Ms. Perelli so that women's concerns could be taken into account when establishing the transitional governing structures, and to set in motion the nomination of qualified female candidates to positions within those structures. UNIFEM and the Iraqi Ministry of Planning jointly convened one of these meetings. Ninety women representing various NGOs from across the country came to present their demands to Mr. Brahimi. Invoking Security Council resolution 1325, they called for the creation of an Iraqi Women's Higher Council in the new transitional administration, nominated 50 women for high-level positions in the new government, and recommended that the vice presidency be filled by a woman. UNIFEM and women's organizations (including the Iraqi Women's Network and the Advisory Council for Women's Affairs in Iraq) followed up these meetings with initiatives to increase women's participation in the selection process. Nomination forms for both the Electoral Commission and the Interim Government were distributed among Iraqi women, public relations campaigns were undertaken to encourage women to nominate themselves for positions, and women received guidance in filling out and submitting the forms. These efforts were rewarded: on 1 June, six women were among the 30 ministers named to the new Iraq Interim Government (Dr. Sawsan AlSharifi (Minister of Agriculture), Dr. Mishkat Moumin (Minister of Environment), Ms. Pascale Isho Warda (Minister of Immigration and Immigrants), Layla Abd AlLateef (Minister of Labor and Social Affairs), Ms. Narmeen Othman (Minister of Women's Affairs), and Ms. Nesreen Berwari (Minister of Municipalities and Public Works)). And of the 1,878 nominations received by the UN electoral assistance team, 111 (6 per cent) were female nominees,243 and two women were named to the nine-member Commission: Hmdia Abbas Muhamad Al-Hussaini and Souad Mohammed Jalal Shalal Al-Jabouri.244 UNIFEM participation in the UN-HABITAT symposium "Strengthening the Capacity of the Housing Sector", held in Amman in September 2004, helped elucidate the problems and difficulties experienced by Iraqi women within both female-headed households and the housing sector. All of UNIFEM's suggestions on how to highlight gender issues in relation to housing and urban development were taken up by the organizing committee and implemented in the final report and recommendations.245 Examples include: formulating a national housing and urban development strategy which enables adequate, affordable shelter and services for women, while simultaneously protecting their rights; developing and implementing policies and legislations that promote gender mainstreaming; encouraging fair gender distribution and job opportunities in housing and urban development; persuaded and involving skilled women and women's groups in community participation, in areas of planning, service delivery, management and maintenance.246 UNIFEM has worked to build the capacity of the State Ministry of Women's Affairs (MoWA) through trainings for Ministry officials, supporting a strategic workshop in September
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2004, and supporting the Ministry to hold the first national women's symposium from 10-11 October in Baghdad. The forum closed with the participation of nearly five hundred delegates from civil society activists, women's NGOs, city councils from different Iraqi governorates, and Iraqi Ministries. MoWA organized and fully prepared the first national Iraqi Women's Forum to mobilize women and strategize the work of the State Ministry. The main outcomes of the forum include formulation of a committee to follow-up on conference's goals and the creation of the national strategy for the advancement of Iraqi women. The conference committee was established to ensure coordination amongst its members, as well as follow-up and achievement of their goals.247 UNIFEM Arab States along with the World Bank, Women for Women International, and Women Waging Peace, organized a conference for Iraqi Women in Amman, Jordan from 7-14 December 2003. UNIFEM organized a one-day session on 10 December, entitled "Application and Advocacy of International Treaties to Iraq" to discuss international vehicles that support women's empowerment, with an emphasis on the UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security and how women can use those tools to advance their agenda in Iraq. Almost 30 Iraqis (men and women) from different backgrounds, religions and ideologies attended the session. The World Bank event, entitled "Women's Economic Rights and Design of Social Fund Projects" focused on their recent report on the status of women in the Middle East and program planning and development. The Women for Women International and Women Waging Peace event, entitled "Guaranteeing Women a Role in Iraq: Translating Experiences from Abroad" focused on message management and the adaptation of governance system from other countries.248 UNIFEM was invited by a number of Iraqi Ministries to conduct briefing sessions on its Gender Mainstreaming programme. In April, the first introductory briefing was given to the Ministry of Human Rights, and an in-depth follow up is also planned. Other Ministries that will receive UNIFEM briefings on gender mainstreaming include the Ministries of Culture, Finance, Planning, Labour and Social Affairs, Human Rights and Municipalities and Public Works. 249 An October 2004 report by UNIFEM, Progress of Arab Women, analyzes Iraq's commitments and reservations to CEDAW, in Chapter 1, on Gender Equality Achievements and Challenges. Chapter 2, on Social Security and Social Welfare, looks at Iraq in relation to the rest of the region primarily for the time under Saddam Hussein's rule.250 In 2004, the UNIFEM Arab States Regional Office published Evaluating the Status of Iraqi Women in Light of the Beijing Platform for Action. This study draws on the available data and analysis from multiple sources to describe the state of Iraqi women in the aftermath of the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. The data treated in the study focus on the period from 1995 to 2003. On the basis of the study and of the changes to the situation of Iraqi women brought about by the war and occupation of 2003, UNIFEM offers a number of recommendations for measures to be taken to improve the status of women and implement the Beijing Platform for Action.251 Throughout the post-conflict period, UNIFEM has worked to promote women's representation in the interim governance structures. The law guaranteeing a quota of 25% female representation in all government bodies, which was passed by the Iraqi Governing Council as a result of strong lobbying by Iraqi women's groups with UNIFEM support, resulted in greater representation of women on the national election ballots in January of 2005. In the wake of the elections, CNN's Lou Dobbs interviewed UNIFEM Programme Officer Bushra Samarai to discuss the high participation of women in the national elections and UNIFEM's role in promoting women's leadership as candidates and voters.252 For example, UNIFEM supported the creation of a network of journalists to improve coverage of women's issues in the Iraqi media ahead of the election, building alliances between
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journalists and women's rights advocates. In order to promote a focused media strategy and raise awareness about the rights and roles of women in elections and other civic processes, UNIFEM supported the creation of leaflets, brochures, posters and booklets by the Iraqi Ministry of Municipality and Public Works and by civil society organizations, and supported the establishment of Gender, Media and Elections focal points in a number Iraqi ministries. UNIFEM also funded a documentary film on women's views about the upcoming election, which aired in mid-December. Field reports from Iraq indicate that, where security and transportation were not an impediment, women were active voters voting first and making up most of the voters - during the January election.253 UNIFEM staff and partners acted as observers of Iraq's January election and reported that things went smoothly, that there was a celebratory atmosphere and that voters seemed proud and happy to be part of this process.254 In early 2005, UNIFEM supported the establishment of three women's civic education training centres, which will promote women's political participation in Iraq. Located in Diwaniya, Erbil and Baghdad, the centres are managed by two women's NGOs selected by UNIFEM and the Ministry of Municipalities Public Works, which will play a supervisory role in the centres' management. Specialized trainers will host seminars on democracy and constitutional support to women from the three governorates served by the centres and from the surrounding areas.255 UNIFEM also supported the establishment, by the international NGO Opportunities for Kids, of the first independent women's radio station in Iraq, which aired its first broadcast on 25 March 2005 from Baghdad on 9602 FM, with a broadcast range of 140km.256 The "Voice of Women" Radio Al Mahaba will advocate for women's rights, particularly with regards to their role and participation in electoral processes. Half of broadcast time is expected to be devoted to the constitutional drafting process and women's participation in the next election.257 Listen to Radio Al Mahaba online.258
Latest UN Documents Latest UN Documents
Security Council Resolutions
1723 (28 November 2006) - The Security Council extends the mandate of the multinational national force in Iraq through 31 December 2007, conditional upon the Government of Iraq's continued approval of its presence, as per the requests of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamel al-Maliki and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Women and girls were not mentioned in this resolution. 1700 (10 August 2006): The Security Council has decided to continue its mandate for another year of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI). After the period of twelve months, there will be another review of the mandate if requested by the Iraqi government. The Security Council would like to be continually updated by the Secretary General on the recent developments regarding the International Compact of Iraq. This resolution does not mention women, gender or girls in regard to the UNAMI mission in Iraq.
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1619 (11 August 2005): The Security Council reassures the sovereignty and unity of Iraq as well as the crucial role of UNAMI (UN Assistance Mission for Iraq) in developing institutions for a representative government and promotion of national integrity. 1557 (12 August 2004): The Security Council endorses the formation of a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq, as presented on 1 June 2004, which will assume full responsibility and authority by 30 June 2004 for governing Iraq while refraining from taking any actions affecting Iraq's destiny beyond the limited interim period until an elected Transitional Government of Iraq assumes office. The Council also welcomes that, by 30 June 2004, the occupation will end and the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist and that Iraq will reassert its full sovereignty. The Council also reaffirms its authorization for the multinational force (S/RES/1511), noting that the force is in Iraq at the request of the Interim Government. The Council sets a deadline of 31 January 2005 for the holding of direct democratic elections. Furthermore, it outlines what the role of the United Nations will be following Iraq's transfer to full sovereignty. 1546 (8 June 2004): In a 15-0 vote, the Security Council, "affirming the importance of the rule of law, national reconciliation, respect for human rights including the rights of women, fundamental freedoms, and democracy including free and fair elections" unanimously "endorses the formation of a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq, presented on 1 June 2004, which will assume full responsibility and authority by 30 June 2004, for governing Iraq" The Council also "welcomes that, also by 30 June 2004, the occupation will end and the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist, and that Iraq will reassert its full sovereignty." The Council endorses the proposed timeline for Iraq's political transition to democratic governance. The resolution details the mandates of the Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral and the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI), based on the needs expressed by the Government of Iraq. Also at the request of the Government of Iraq, the Council reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force (established under resolution 1511). The mandate for the multinational force will be reviewed at the request of the Government of Iraq or by 8 June 2005, and will be terminated once Iraq has completed its transition to democratic governance, or earlier at the request of the Government of Iraq. 1538 (21 April 2004): Affirming that any illicit activities by UN staff and contractors is unacceptable, the Security Council welcomes the appointment of the independent high-level inquiry into allegations of corruption in administration and management of the Oil-for-Food Programme. The Council calls upon the CPA, Iraq, and all other Member States to cooperate fully in the inquiry. 1511 (16 October 2003): The Security Council underscores the temporary nature of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), welcomes the positive response of the international community to the establishment of the Governing Council and determines that the Iraqi Governing Council embodies the sovereignty of the State of Iraq during the transitional period. The Security Council further calls on the CPA to return governing responsibilities and authorities to the people of Iraq as soon as practicable. The Security Council invites the Iraqi Governing Council to submit a timetable for the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution, and offers the resources of the United Nations in that regard. The Security Council authorizes the establishment of a multinational force under unified command to take all necessary measures to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq, and condemns recent terrorist attacks, including the assassination of Dr. Aqila al-Hashimi. 1500 (14 August 2003): The Security Council welcomes the establishment of the Iraqi Governing Council as a step toward the formation of an internationally recognized, representative government chosen by the people of Iraq. The Security Council also establishes the United
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Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) to assist the Secretary-General in fulfilling his mandate under resolution 1483. 1483 (22 May 2003): Following the ouster of Saddam Hussein's government by the US-led coalition, the Security Council recognizes the US and the Britain as occupying powers under unified command (the "Authority"), to remain in control of Iraq until "an internationally recognized, representative government is established by the people of Iraq". The Council reaffirms, in the second paragraph, its commitment to a "rule of law that affords equal rights and justice to all Iraqi citizens without regard to ethnicity, religion, or gender," recalling its pledge to promote gender equality as outlined in resolution 1325. The Council lifts its sanctions against Iraq, with the exception of an arms embargo, and outlines plans for a Development Fund for Iraq to be established, which will be audited by an internationally approved board, but disbursed at the discretion of the Authority. The Council authorizes the appointment of a Special Representative to the Secretary-General who will coordinate the UN's part in Iraq's reconstruction, which it is to undertake in cooperation with the Authority and the people of Iraq. And the Council extends the Secretary-General's emergency authority over the Oil-for-Food Programme for a final six months, at the end of which the responsibility for administering the delivery of essential civilian goods will pass to the Authority and to an Iraqi interim administration. 1476 (24 April 2003): Provisions for the Secretary-General to accelerate the delivery, under the Oil-for-Food Programme, of priority items are extended to 3 June. This extension gives the Office of the Iraq Programme and UN agencies time to identify and ship additional goods and supplies. 1472 (28 March 2003): In response to the invasion of Iraq, the Security Council unanimously urges all parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international law, and calls on the international community to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to the people of Iraq. The Council also adjusts the Oil-for-Food Programme for the duration of the conflict and authorizes the Secretary-General to facilitate the delivery and receipt of goods contracted by the Government of Iraq for the urgent humanitarian needs of its people. 1441 (8 November 2002): The Security Council declares Iraq to be in material breach of its obligations under previous resolutions, including 687, and gives Iraq a final opportunity to disarm under the unrestricted scrutiny of an enhanced inspection programme or risk "serious consequences". The Council gives Iraq 30 days to fully disclose all aspects of its WMD and delivery system programmes, and warns that any omission or falsification will be considered further material breach of its obligations. 1352 (1 June 2001): The Security Council amends the Oil-for-Food Programme so that Iraq can more easily import strictly humanitarian goods to meet the needs of its people, but at the same time fail in its efforts to import prohibited goods or to earn income outside the UN escrow account through unauthorized oil sales. This amendment is more widely known as "smart sanctions". 1284 (17 December 1999): The Security Council creates the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to succeed UNSCOM and continue its mandate to disarm Iraq of its WMD, and to monitor Iraq's compliance with the prohibition against it reacquiring such weapons.259 The Secretary-General appoints Dr. Hans Blix of Sweden as Executive Chairman to UNMOVIC and appointed Commissioners from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United Nations (Department for Disarmament Affairs), and the United States.
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986 (14 April 1995): While keeping economic sanctions in place, the Security Council allows Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil so that it can meet the humanitarian needs of its people. The resolution is implemented in December 1996 and became known as the Oil-for-Food Programme.260 The Council reserves the majority of Iraq's oil-sales revenues for the humanitarian programme, but also calls for Iraq's oil revenues to pay for war reparations and to cover the administrative and operational costs of the Oil-for-Food and weapons inspections programmes. All of Iraq's contract requests are to be vetted by the UN to control dual-use goods. 689 (9 April 1991): The Security Council establishes the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM),261 as set out in 687 and as outlined in the Secretary-General's report of 5 April 1991, to monitor the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between Iraq and Kuwait. UNIKOM begins as an unarmed observer mission, but is later strengthened and permitted to take physical action to prevent violations of the DMZ. The Force Commander was Major General Miguel Angel Moreno, who was succeeded by Major General Franciszek Gagor of Poland. States contributing military personnel (in 2003) were Argentina, Austria, Bangladesh, China, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungar, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. UNIKOM was withdrawn 17 March 2003 in advance of the invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition (see below). 687 (3 April 1991): The Security Council establishes the terms and conditions for a cease-fire between Iraq and the coalition of Member States co-operating with Kuwait. It requires that Iraq, under international supervision, eliminate all weapons of mass destruction (WMD), long-range ballistic missiles, and related production facilities, and it prohibited Iraq from reacquiring or reproducing such items. The Security Council calls for the establishment of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to monitor Iraq's disarmament under the terms of the cease-fire. It also establishes a DMZ between Iraq and Kuwait, to be monitored by a UN observer unit. 686 (2 March 1991): The Security Council demands that Iraq return seized Kuwaiti property, release all prisoners of war, and accept responsibility for the costs to Kuwait and other Member States that its invasion had incurred. 678 (29 November 1990): The Security Council demands that Iraq comply with resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions. If it does not comply by 15 January 1991, the Council authorizes Member States cooperating with the legitimate government of Kuwait to use all necessary means to compel Iraq to do so and to restore international peace and security in the area. 661 (6 August 1990): The Security Council imposes mandatory arms and economic sanctions against Iraq, and on Kuwait while under Iraqi occupation. The Council establishes Committee 661 (comprised of all SC members) to monitor the sanctions. 660 (2 August 1990): The Security Council condemns Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and demands that Iraq immediately withdraw its forces.
Reports of the Secretary-General to the Security Council
5 December 2007 - This quarterly report covers activities of the United Nations in Iraq since 1 September 2006. Progress was made in implementing programs to restore basic services such as education, health, water and sanitation. Hundreds of schools, public health centers and water and
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sanitation systems were rehabilitated with funds from the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq. Despite this progress, the security situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate. The period was marked by a "significant increase in sectarian violence, insurgent and terrorist attacks and criminal activities." Civilian casualties reached an all-time high. The number of displaced persons increased. Efforts to strengthen the government yielded disappointing results, largely because of the overall instability in the country. Gender-specific language included the following: "With the approaching winter, there are increasing concerns about the well-being and basic rights of the displaced, especially women, children, the disabled and the elderly." (P35) "In addition, the situation of women has deteriorated further and an increasing number were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or of `honour killings'." (P43) "On 6 September 2006, 27 individuals, including one woman, were executed in Baghdad for murder, kidnapping and terrorism-related charges." (P48) "The large number of casualties is having a much wider social impact than immediate death or injury. Fatal incidents invariably produce widows, orphans and female-headed households who must bear the burden of lost breadwinners and broken families." (P67)
3 March 2006: The report provides an update on UN activities in Iraq since the previous report of 7 December 2005, presenting a summary of major political developments, particularly with regard to the December 2005 election, the Government formation process, and regional developments pertaining to Iraq. The Security-General reported that the new Council of Representatives is broadly representative of Iraq's communities and includes a substantial percentage of women. 7 March 2005: The Secretary-General reported that the UN was able to continue its reconstruction efforts in Iraq despite the fragile security situation, among them "support for civil society through professional organizations and women's groups and support for the electoral process, including voter education programmes for women". He noted that the UNAMI Human Rights office is continuing to work with Iraqi institutions to address past human rights violations as well as present challenges, based on a human rights programme developed in December 2004 at a meeting organized by UNAMI and UNHCHR, and attended by representatives of other UN agencies and programmes UNIFEM among them donor Governments, representatives of international civil society organizations and Iraqi Ministries, the Ministry of Women's Affairs. The rights of women and children was one of the thematic areas for which support activities had been planned. The Secretary-General reported that a key recommendation was for UNHCHR to devote a section of its website to human rights activities undertaken in Iraq by the UN, Governments, international organizations and NGOs. The Secretary-General also reported on the results of the January 2005 election, noting that "the electoral system resulted in over 31 per cent of seats being awarded to female candidates -- surpassing the goal established in the Transitional Administrative Law". The Secretary-General noted that, pursuant to Security Council resolution 1546 (2004), the UN is expected to play an active role in supporting constitution-making process. He reports that his Special Representative has begun consultations with a wide range of Iraqis and strongly support Iraqis taking full ownership of the process. To that end, the UN would be ready to assist in four main areas: political facilitation to promote dialogue with a view to maximizing inclusiveness and fostering participation; support for an Iraqi media campaign to promote transparency; technical assistance to an Iraqi constitution-drafting body; and coordinating international assistance. The Secretary-General reported that the next donors' meeting would be held in Amman in spring
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2005. He noted that the security situation is still unstable, and that while the January elections have created positive momentum and offer a new opportunity for Iraq, significant regional variations and the low turnout among Arab Sunnis present significant challenges. He envisions the making of the new constitution as a key opportunity for forging national consensus. 8 December 2004: The Secretary-General summarized key developments in Iraq and gave an update on security arrangements for the United Nations presence in Iraq. His report focused on the priority tasks for the United Nations set forth in resolution 1546 (2004), particularly the role of the United Nations in the political process, including preparations for the planned elections, and the work of his Special Representative for Iraq. The Secretary-General mentioned that the electoral cluster established within the UN Development Group is working to enhance women's political participation. He also noted that despite the fragile security environment, the UN has been able to continue reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts throughout Iraq in partnership with national and international NGOs, and that the activities have included "support to civil society through professional organizations and women's groups; and support to the electoral process, including voter education programmes for women". The Secretary-General also reported: "The United Nations Development Fund for Women set up a network of gender focal points within the ministries, organized training activities and launched a project to enhance women's participation in elections." 3 September 2004: The Secretary-General reported that his Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) arrived in Amman on 8 August 2004, and proceeded to Baghdad on 13 August. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General included the National Conference to select an Interim National Council and promote national dialogue and consensus-building on the country's future, held 15 18 August 2004. The Secretary-General reported that his Special Representative "had an opportunity to meet with leaders from Iraqi political life, including non-governmental organizations, members of minority groups and women's organizations participating in the Conference." According to the SecretaryGeneral, the Conference decided to establish an Interim National Council, one of whose key functions will be to monitor the work of the Interim Government and which will need to be representative and professional. The Secretary-General also reported on how the security situation is hampering UN efforts in Iraq. (S/2004/710) 5 August 2004: The Secretary-General reported on the activities of UNAMI since the issuance of his last report. The Secretary-General reported that since December 2003, the security environment in Iraq had not improved and that therefore Iraq programme activities had been based in Cyprus, Jordan and Kuwait. He noted that while International staff were allowed into Iraq only for operations deemed essential, the UN remained committed to assisting in post-conflict reconstruction. The Secretary-General reported that UNAMI has actively monitored political issues relevant to the transition process in Iraq, and that it has fostered a sustained effort by United Nations agencies and programmes to support Iraqi ministries and civil society in the delivery of services to the Iraqi people. (S/2004/625) 5 December 2003: The Secretary-General reported on UN activities and key developments in Iraq from 17 July 2003 to 19 August 2003, described the events of 19 August 2003, detailed UN relief, recovery and reconstruction activities that continued through the reporting period, summarized key political developments in Iraq since 19 August 2003, and outlined a plan of action regarding security, the deployment of the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) and the continuation of UN relief, recovery and reconstruction activities. Brief references to women or gender were made in paras. 36, 38, 41, 56, 58, 71 and 100. The Secretary-General noted that UN Agencies and programmes have held regular meetings with the CPA and Iraqi officials in the region, which included round-table discussions with Iraqi officials, academics and other members
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of civil society on gender and the environment. He called attention to FAO programming in Basra that has paid particular attention to female-headed households in its agricultural assistance and efforts to rehabilitate irrigation systems in war-affected areas. The Secretary-General also noted that UNICEF has "helped the Ministry of Health improve the delivery of services for children and women through the rehabilitation of primary health centres, reconstruction of delivery rooms and continuous training of health workers." Regarding the appointment of interim ministers and the work of the preparatory constitutional committee, the Secretary-General noted that: "Only one woman was appointed interim minister (compared with three in the Governing Council)." He called attention to the assassination of Aqila al-Hashimi, one of the three women on the Governing Council, which he said illustrated "the severe risks facing Iraqis cooperating with the Coalition Provisional Authority". The Secretary-General noted that "civil society, especially national human rights and women's organizations and national media, have an essential role to play in the political dialogue on the future of their country" and reminded the Security Council that support for such civil society organizations were to be one of the core areas of activity for UNAMI, as laid out in his report of 17 July 2003. Finally, the Secretary-General noted that among the assistance activities planned by UN Agencies and programmes for 2004 is the establishment of the National Open University of Iraq, supported by UNESCO, which will utilize "distance-education methods to provide quality education and skills training that will be specifically targeted at disadvantaged groups, including women and the disabled." 17 July 2003: The Secretary-General reported on the work of his Special Representative, providing an initial assessment to the challenges the UN will face in implementing Security Council resolution 1483, and identifying areas where he thought the UN could play a useful role. The Secretary-General noted that the UN is "exploring ways to play a meaningful role, in coordination with the Coalition Provisional Authority, in assisting the people of Iraq." The Secretary-General noted that his Special Representative had met with "members of civil society, including nascent Iraqi human rights and non-governmental organizations, women's associations, journalists, and independent professionals and business leaders," as well as other representatives of Iraqi society, in the first few weeks of his mandate. The Secretary-General noted that several common themes ran through the discussions of the Special Representative with various Iraqi representatives, among them: an overwhelming demand for the early restoration of sovereignty, serious concern about the process of de-Baathification and the dissolution of the Iraqi army, immediate practical concerns including security and the provision of basic services, criticism of the United Nations' past role in Iraq balanced with an appreciation for ongoing UN humanitarian efforts and the belief that UN involvement is essential to the legitimacy of the political process. The Secretary-General also noted: "In his meetings, my Special Representative has also emphasized the important role to be played by women in the rebuilding of the country. He has stressed that Iraqi women represent a powerful force for peace, reconciliation and stability, who should be empowered and afforded the opportunity of playing their rightful political, economic and social role. Occasionally the groups with which my Special Representative has met have included a small representation of women. Clearly this is an area that will take time to develop." In discussing the lack of security in Iraq, the Secretary-General noted that for most Iraqis, the principal threat to personal security comes from violent crime. He further reported: "Iraqis--especially women--have expressed their fear of being on the streets after dark, together with concern about abductions and attacks." The Secretary-General noted that "the development of civil society, in particular effective, professional and independent human rights and women's rights groups, and free and independent media" are vital to "the promotion of human rights and respect for the rule of law". The Secretary-General reported that: "Iraqi women have been particularly affected by the state of insecurity. Immediately after the conflict, many women were confined to their homes in the cities amidst reports of increased harassment and violence directed towards them. This confinement has impaired access to health care, both for women and their children. In general, women are underrepresented in efforts to structure and manage both the political and the rehabilitation and
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recovery processes. My Special Representative has emphasized to all political parties and movements the need to promote the full participation of Iraqi women in the transitional political and constitutional processes. Equally, their economic and other needs must be addressed, in particular those of women heads of household, who have long assumed a great deal of responsibility for managing families and communities without much support." The SecretaryGeneral noted that he looked forward to the findings of the recent UNIFEM assessment mission "to provide a meaningful basis for action in this regard." 31 March 2003: The Secretary-General reported that conditions in the United Nations IraqKuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM) area of operations had deteriorated so much that he had been obliged, for security reasons, to suspend its operations on 17 March 2003. The situation along the Iraq-Kuwait border had become tense as a result of the military build-up on the Kuwaiti side of the Demilitarized Zone. The Secretary-General reported that UNIKOM had on most occasions received full cooperation from both Iraqi and Kuwaiti authorities. With the outbreak of conflict on 20 March, most UNIKOM personnel had to be evacuated. By 21 March, only a small UNIKOM headquarters remained in Kuwait City to provide any necessary support to other UN activities. The Secretary-General reported that the withdrawal of UNIKOM personnel would be temporary, and that decisions about the timing of its return and about its mandate would rest with the Security Council. 12 November 2002: The Secretary-General reported that the Oil-for-Food Programme had improved overall socio-economic conditions of the Iraqi people countrywide and had prevented further degradation of public services and infrastructure, but noted that most sectors were still unable to function at pre-war or sufficient levels. The Secretary-General also criticized Iraq's underproduction of oil, reporting that it resulted in a revenue shortfall that adversely impacted the humanitarian programme. The Secretary-General praised the success of two strategies targeting women in the northern governorates: "Agencies provided input for skills training that aimed at improving women's access to income and other assets and providing training in literacy other technical skills." And between 1996 and 2002, "there has been a 20 percent reduction in acute malnutrition, a 56 percent reduction in chronic malnutrition and a 44 percent reduction in the incidence of underweight children in the under-five age group, in part because of a specifically targeted nutrition programme and supplementary feeding for pregnant and lactating mothers and other vulnerable groups. The nutrition programme, which started in 1998, continues to provide continues to provide supplementary rations to 75,000 people in the three northern governorates, including malnourished children and their families, pregnant women and nursing mothers." The Secretary-General reported that $1 billion of holds (including medicines, chemicals, and watertreatment equipment) had been released and approved, and that the goods review list for the programme had been revised, placing numerous humanitarian items on an approved fast-track list. 10 March 2000: The Secretary-General reported that since sanctions were imposed in 1990, Iraq's oil industry had produced some 5,000 million barrels of oil with virtually no investment in infrastructure repairs or maintenance. The result was "a massive decline in the condition, effectiveness and efficiency of that infrastructure, coupled with appalling safety conditions and significant environmental damage." The Secretary-General reported that so far, the damage could be repaired with the necessary spare parts and equipment, but that it was in increasing danger of deteriorating to the point of causing "irreparable damage to oil fields and the permanent loss of production and export capacity". The Secretary-General urged the Security Council to approve the expedited delivery of spare parts and equipment to Iraq to support the oil exports necessary to the functioning of the humanitarian programme. The Secretary-General also reported on various UN monitoring and observation mechanisms in Iraq.
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18 April 1991: After Iraq accepted the terms of the cease-fire set out in Security Council Resolution 687, the Secretary-General submitted to the Council his report regarding the creation of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)262 to monitor Iraq's elimination of nonnuclear WMD and to assist the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the nuclear areas. Following the Council's acceptance of the report, the Secretary-General appointed Ambassador Rolf Ekus of Sweden as Executive Chairman of UNSCOM and appointed 20 other members of the commission from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuala. On 1 July 1997, Mr. Richard Butler of Australia became Executive Chairman, but no successor was appointed when he finished his two-year term. On 17 December 1999, UNMOVIC was created to replace UNSCOM through the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1284.
General Assembly Resolutions and Reports
23 January 2003: A/RES/57/232, Situation of Human Rights in Iraq. 20 August 2002: A/57/325, Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Iraq. 27 February 2002: A/RES/56/174, Situation of Human Rights in Iraq. 20 December 2000: A/RES/55/115, Human Rights Situation in Iraq.
ECOSOC Resolutions and Reports
23 January 2003: E/CN.4/2003/40, Situation of Human Rights in Iraq, Report Submitted by the Special Rapporteur. 11 April 2003: E/CN.4/2003/L.6, Situation of Human Rights in Iraq. 25 April 2003: E/CN.4/2003/84 Situation of Human Rights in Iraq, Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2003/84. 15 March 2002: E/CN.4/2002/44, Situation of Human Rights in Iraq, Report Submitted by the Special Rapporteur. 19 April 2002: E/CN.4/RES/2002/15 Situation of Human Rights in Iraq, Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2002/15. 16 January 2001: E/CN.4/2001/42, Situation of Human Rights in Iraq, Report Submitted by the Special Rapporteur. 16 August 2001: Humanitarian Situation of the Iraqi Population, Sub-Commission on Human Rights Decision 2001/115. 18 April 2001: E/CN.4/RES/2001/14, Situation of Human Rights in Iraq, Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2001/14.
ENDNOTES:
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1
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2 "Attacks on Independent Women's Organization and its `Center for Protecting Women' Are Condemned," Open Letter from Sawsan Salim, The International Iraqi Women's Action Committee Abroad, 16 July 2000 http://www.wpiraq.org/english/sawsan.html#6 Kurdistan Regional Government, "About KRG: Cabinet Members," http://www.krg.org/about/cabinet.asp Women Waging Peace, Winning the Peace Conference Report: Women's Role in Post-Conflict Iraq, April 2003, http://www.womenwagingpeace.net/content/articles/Winning%20the%20Peace%20Report.pdf 3 Human Rights Watch, Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad, July 2003, http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0703/ 4 Mueller, Mark. "Women's Voices Missing in Iraqi Political Parties," 19 July 2003, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001171146_iraqwomen19m.html 5 Centcom Leaflet Gallery, http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/showleaflets.asp 6 Human Rights Watch, Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad, July 2003, http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0703/ and Clarisa Bencomo, personal communication, 1 August 2003 (presentation at UNICEF) World Bank, UNICEF, and WHO, Iraq's Health Sector (Draft of text for MOH/UNDG/WB Situation Assessment and Strategy Option Paper (Version 2_2), Submitted 31 August 2003, p.18. 7 Climate of Fear, http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0703/ 8 United Nations/World Bank Joint Iraq Needs Assessment, October 2003, http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/mna/mena.nsf/Attachments/Iraq+Joint+Needs+Assessment/$File/Joint+Needs+Assessment.pd f
9
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12
Carl Conetta, "The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Non-combatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict," Project on Defense Alternatives, Research Monograph #8, 20 October 2003, http://www.comw.org/pda/0310rm8.html#5.%20Total%20Iraqi%20fatalities%20in%20the%202003 13 "Iraq: School Attendance Falling Due to Fear of Abduction," IRIN, 7 October 2003, http://electroniciraq.net/news/1139.shtml 14 "Continuing Collateral Damage: The Health and Environmental Costs of War on Iraq 2003," MedAct, 11 November 2003, http://www.medact.org/tbx/docs/Coll%20Dam%202.pdf
Gloria Jacobs, "Breastfeeding Ads are Okayed; Female Gis Report Rapes," Women's eNews, 31 January 2004, http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1694/context/archive
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"Iraq: Women's Groups Under Threat in the New Iraq," IRIN, 24 March 2004, http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40230&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAQ
18
Kelly Kurt, "Women's Rights Advocate Among Dead in Iraq," Associated Press, 12 March 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3851057,00.html "Iraq: Women's Groups Under Threat in the New Iraq," IRIN, 24 March 2004, http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40230&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAQ
19
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20 21
BBC News, "Iraq Women Gunned Down," 22 January 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3419345.stm
Jeffrey Gettleman, "2 More Iraqis Working for Americans Are Slain," 11 March 2004, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?tntget=2004/03/11/international/middleeast/11CND-IRAQ.html&tntemail0
22
"Iraq: Women's Groups Under Threat in the New Iraq," IRIN, 24 March 2004, http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=40230&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAQ
23
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24 25
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26 27
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31
32
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34 BBC News. "Families plead for Iraq hostages." 20 September 2004. Last accessed 22 September 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3671172.stm
33
BBC News. "Iraq's Women Scientists." 22 September 2004. Last accessed 22 September 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3679040.stm BBCArabic.com, "Voices from Iraq", 10 September 2004. Last accessed 22 September 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3632000.stm
37 38 36
35
Human Rights Watch, "State of the Evidence", Vol. 16, No. 7(E), November 2004, http://hrw.org/reports/2004/iraq1104/
Amnesty International, "Iraq: Decades of Suffering, Now Women Deserve Better," 22 February 2005, http://www.womenwarpeace.org/iraq/docs/ai-irq-22feb.pdf
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40 41
39
BBC News, "Iraq hostages: Facts and figures," 4 March 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3662562.stm
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42 43 44
Giuliana Sgrena, "My truth," Il Manifesto, 6 March 2005, http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/ BBC News, "US troops fire at freed hostage", 4 March 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4320111.stm
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47 Brown, Michelle and Shannon Meehan, "Iraq: Focus on Women's Needs," Refugees International via InterActi...