IRAQ: Women Resist Return to Sectarian Laws
WASHINGTON - As Iraq struggles to define its future, there is one important group that has been largely left out of the process: women.
But they are refusing to be left behind. With little international support or media attention, a network of more than 150 women’s organisations across Iraq is fighting to preserve their rights in the new constitutional revision process. 
As part of a campaign to garner international support, the Iraq Women’s Movement sent a letter in May to U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and another to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressing concern over the constitutional review process taking place and calling for international support for their effort to preserve women’s rights in Iraqi law.
“As women face escalating violence and exclusion in Iraq, they have been marginalised in reconciliation initiatives and negotiations for government positions,” the letter noted.
“Even with the shy and insignificant pressure exerted by the U.N. and other international donors/players on the Iraqi government and politicians to fulfill minimum obligations of Security Council Resolution 1325, the action taken has been a sequence of disappointments…”
Passed in 2000, Resolution 1325 emphasises the importance of women’s participation in conflict resolution and peace-building processes. A second resolution, 1483, applies this conviction specifically to Iraq.
More than three years ago, the United States was instrumental in overturning an amendment to the interim constitution that would have lifted protections for women and children. U.S. and international pressure, and Iraqi women who took to the streets, succeeded in defeating the provision, which was contradictory to many other parts of the constitution.
Following that triumph, women turned out in record numbers for the 2005 election. They secured 33 percent of the seats in the National Assembly but remain woefully absent from other influential branches of the government, according to a 2006 report from the Iraq Legal Development Project.
The effectiveness of previous international pressure has spurred the women’s movement in Iraq to call the world’s attention to this issue once again, but there has been little acknowledgement of their effort so far. The office of the U.N. secretary-general has released only a very general statement about the review process since the Iraqi Women’s Movement sent their letter on May 21. Pelosi’s office has not yet recognised the letter publicly.
Hanaa Edwar is a leader of the Iraqi Women’s Movement and founder of the Iraqi Al-Amal Association, a national civil society group based in Baghdad. She is campaigning against Article 41, a provision buried in the text of the draft constitution that places personal status laws under the influence of religion, sect or belief. These are the laws that administer marriage, divorce, inheritance, child custody and how religious courts settle disputes among Muslims, Christians and Jews.
But “there is no unity across sects or even within sects” on the rules that govern family and women’s status, Edwar noted.
Warning that the current language could “deepen the sectarian issues in this society”, Edwar added: “We feel that this is not a women’s demand, it is a national demand. This is important for national security.”
“National security” is a term that the U.S. Congress knows well, and the Iraqi women appealed to the issues that are keystones of U.S. policy in the Middle East. Their letter to Pelosi asks for “help in preventing Iraq from taking the identity of a Religious State,” and includes a reminder that, “any destabilisation in the state of law, economy and security in Iraq can reflect on the security and stability of the whole region.”
Mary Trotochaud, an activist who has worked both on the ground in Iraq and with lawmakers in Washington, told IPS that, “This movement originates from three generations of women who had really strong rights.”
Iraq’s progressive women’s rights laws began when the “personal status laws” were included in the 1959 Constitution. In 1970, women were formally guaranteed equal rights and additional laws ensured their right to vote, attend school, run for office and own property.
Iraq has also ratified a series of international treaties that guarantee equal rights for all, including the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that protect the pluralistic nature of Iraqi society and offer unprecedented protections to women in an Arab country.
Yet Iraqi women still faced considerable historical obstacles to their political participation, including Ba’ath policies that disenfranchised them and Saddam Hussein’s strengthening of Islamic and tribal traditions in an effort to consolidate power in the 1990s.
“These are human rights issues that we’re talking about that we should be advocating all the time in all countries,” Trotochaud said. “We shouldn’t be shy about saying that.”
The most recent campaign to preserve these rights began in 2003 in the wake of Hussein’s fall and the dissolution of Iraq’s existing legal, political and economic systems. Women’s groups began springing up around the country and organising to advocate for their rights and participation in the new constitution and government.
The network of groups held regional and national meetings and met with parliamentarians and officials across sect and party lines. “When the time for constitutional conventions came, women were already organised,” said Trotochaud, who was living in Iraq at the time.
However, the spiraling violence has taken its toll on the campaign. “The sectarian divide has gotten big enough that people who have worked together in the past don’t work together now,” she added.
The constitutional review process has laboured on for the past six months with few signs of progress. Debate remains bogged down in issues like the disposition of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city in the northern, Kurdish-dominated region; the distribution of national wealth; and de-Baathification.
Article 41, which places family law under religious and tribal traditions, is still in the drafts of the constitution and women’s rights in the process remain a backstage issue.
Edwar said that the Constitutional Review Committee has been granted another month to complete its work. Refusing to be discouraged by the lack of international attention, she looks at the delay as an opportunity to advance the movement’s goals of ensuring that women’s rights and family law will be included in her country’s new constitution and that civil society will be a part of the process.
The Iraqi Women’s Movement has submitted its own language to the review committee for consideration to replace the objectionable Article 41. It says that, “The Iraqi state should ensure that personal status laws should be organised according to law.” Edwar said they were often met with support for the Movement’s appeal but that “women’s issues are one of the compromise issues among politicians.”
There is likely little that will stop the political maneuvering in the run-up to the referendum on the new constitution. But Edwar made clear that the Iraqi Women’s Movement will continue its campaign to preserve human rights until the very last moment and she represents a political force that will keep women’s rights on the political agenda for years to come.
As stated in their letter to Pelosi, “Our hopes in our nation are big, but our trust in our women’s resilience has no boundaries.”
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
Saddest sentence above: Edwar said they were often met with support for the Movement’s appeal but that “women’s issues are one of the COMPROMISE issues among politicians.” (emphasis added.)
Last time I checked, women were human rights! How sad that human rights are a “compromise” issue.
Truest sentence from above: “but our trust in our women’s resilience has no boundaries.”
I often wonder why the strength and resilience of the female is so feared by BOTH males and females. Yes women, we are often our own worst enemies – too many of us fear our strength just as many men do.
The energy of ALL human beings is part male / part female. The body is just the holder of this combined energy. The anatomy doesn’t matter. Every person needs to stop being afraid of that female strength in themselves. It’s a different kind of strength.
Because women are too afraid to claim our own strength and men are too afraid to claim (let alone trust or rely on) on their own female strength, human beings have waited for some male-dominated political / religious / social process to make it OK to recognize what is part of every person’s very make-up. And this has contributed greatly to the yin-yang, female-male, goddess-god energy imbalance in the world today.
We’ve seen what the overuse of typical ‘male’ strength has wrote over the last three centuries, both in ourselves, in our families, in our communities, in our world. It’s time for ALL OF US to embrace our feminine. It’s time to use a different kind strength. Things don’t HAVE to be this way. Balance can be restored.
Start with yourself. To all women and to all men: stop fearing your own feminine strength. Bring yourselves into balance. It’s the greatest gift that you can give to yourself and to the world.
The weaker elements of society always suffer more during war or disaster. The children and elderly are in a bad way too.
Any part of this that is made worse by social or religious custom is impossible for us to fix. Now that we have destroyed what little they have it is a primitive struggle for survival.
We can’t fix it and we had no business interfering in the first place.
Thank you Neocons for oppressing the women of Iraq! I hate you Bastards!
In spite of all the evils of the Saddam regime, Iraq used to be a non-religious state. Women had more rights than in other countries in the area.
For women to lose out now would be just one more step backwards for the country.
Well said jld.
We all know Saddam Hussein was a evil man. There is no doubt about that. But, at the same time he had his good points. Religion was kept out of politic’s. The religious extremist’s that are running wild in Iraq today were kept in check by means of terror. Which is literally the only way people like that can be controlled to any degree. But, that is problem Bush has created by invading them. He has let the gene out of the bottle and his chances of ever getting it back in are slim to none. Which only means that Iraq’s women will be the big losers in the end. There is every likelihood Iraq will eventually turn out to be another religious fundamentalist country in the end. Which is another tragedy. It could have been prevented by listening to people with more knowledge of the area. Bush was told before he ever invaded them what the outcome would probably be…civil war among religions. That is what makes his invasion even more diabolical. Because it was totally unnecessary.
it’s notable that Iraqi women — whose courage in demanding their rights is jaw-dropping — are particularly petitioning to work in areas of conflict resolution and peace-keeping
and Iraqi men think they’re not needed!?! one can only conclude that men in power, (both in US and Iraq) would rather hold onto the reins of power — even as their countries crumble around them — than permit any new voices of reason to challenge their visions of war and domination
must we all go down with the dinosaurs?
Anybody who didn’t know that looting Iraq -or any other country- would not leave everything in shambles should have.
You people must think we have equality of the SEX’s , they make less money for the same work men get. Haven’t you noticed the U.S. has never elected a women president? America and Canada realy don’t like women to rule, allthough it would lead to a better government.