zurück

IRAQ: Focus on increasing domestic violence

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Tuesday 14 October 2003

ANKARA, 14 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - With insecurity increasing in parts of Iraq, concern over the treatment of women has been raised as NGOs working on domestic violence are forced to scale back.

"It is thought that domestic violence has increased with the high unemployment rate and the everyday frustrations of living in today's Iraq," an aid worker with Norwegian Church Aid told IRIN. This statement was based on the preliminary findings of a joint NGO report which is yet to be released.

HONOUR KILLINGS COMMON IN THE NORTH

However, the problem of domestic violence is deep-rooted according to one NGO in northern Iraq. Domestic violence and so-called honour killings (a murder committed by a family member to protect the family's honour) have constituted the most serious problems faced by women in northern Iraq for generations.

"Under Saddam Hussein's rule, women were considered [mere] objects, and suffered under the oppression of the regime and of male violence without having any possibility to defend themselves," the women's project coordinator for the German NGO, WADI, Suaad Abdulrachman, told IRIN from Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq.

Whereas there are no recent statistics on incidences of domestic violence in the north, a study by the Sulaymaniyah-based Rewan Women's Information and Cultural Centre (RWICC) recorded 3,979 cases of women killed as the result of domestic violence in the north in the 1980s. However, RWICC believes the number to be much higher, as many cases go unreported. "Women were regularly raped in custody, tortured and abused," Abdulrachman maintained.

One of the more recent cases dealt with by WADI involved a woman called Awaz, who tried to commit suicide after her husband refused to stop having an affair. "He began to violate her human rights by beating her. When we visited their quarter (Rahimawah), the people of the area gave us some information concerning the problem.

After a number of counselling sessions with the woman and her husband, we were able to resolve their problem successfully. We plan to monitor this case by paying the couple regular visits," a report on the case by the NGO said.

In a recent honour killing incident, a 23-year-old girl was taken to a women's refuge run by WADI in the northern city of Arbil after taking refuge in a women's prison for eight months. She had been attacked, stabbed and raped at home by an acquaintance of her father and, according to doctors, was lucky to have survived. But staff working for WADI said her family had shown no mercy.

"In her father's and brother's eyes she was 'dishonoured', just because she lost her virginity, even if she was the victim of a crime."

No charges were brought against the rapist, but her family were ready to kill the girl in order to protect the "family honour". With the help of a neighbour, she escaped to Sulaymaniyah where she contacted the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's women's organisation, Yikety Jinan.

In 1990, Article 111 of the Iraqi Penal Code exempted from prosecution and punishment men who killed their female relatives in defence of their family's honour. Human rights groups estimate that since the law became effective, 4,000 women have fallen victim to it.

In the Kurdish area of Iraq, the authorities suspended the law in 2000, but women's rights groups told IRIN that despite the suspension, honour killings were still prevalent throughout the north.

OTHER CAUSES OF PERSECUTION

Some other areas in which Iraqi women are discriminated against, according to WADI, include the arrest of a woman belonging to a family a member of whom had fled Iraq (as per a report published in the official Iraqi newspaper Al-Zawrah).

Another is a decree providing for a woman to be punished with 80 lashes of the whip by her husband if she asks for too much gold jewellery. The penal code, in article 41, authorises husbands to beat their wives for educational purposes. By decree of the Revolutionary Command Council prostitution was punished by beheading.

"Many women do not have the right to choose their husband. Unmarried women have to stay with their family," Abdulrachman said. After 1991, the situation improved somewhat after the Saddam regime lost control in northern Iraq, she said, adding, however, that domestic violence and honour killings continued.

According to the NGO, women would often try and commit suicide, particularly through self-immolation. In the governorate of Sulaymaniyah 119 cases were recorded by RWICC in 2002. However, the aid worker said the media and aid agencies had contributed towards resolving the problem by publicising it more broadly. "The media is dealing with it, and different shelters were established to assist these women," she added.

During Saddam's time, there was virtually no assistance for such women, as even the law virtually enshrined the abuse of women in southern and central Iraq.

"During Saddam's time, women who were killed or abused were seen as the persecutors not the victims," Abdulrachman maintained. "Iraqi society as a whole and the Kurdish especially suffered under 35 years of a heinous dictatorship, which has killed hundred of thousands of people, destroyed large parts of the country and forced people to live in a world of fear."

The psychological effect this violence has had on women is yet to be determined, according to aid workers, who say there is a lack of efficient psychologists and therapists.

"These programmes have to be expanded, enlarged and skilled psychologists specialised in trauma therapy are badly needed," Abdurachman stressed.

With two shelters for women in distress in Nawa in Sulaymaniyah and Khanzad in Arbil, WADI is trying to assist vulnerable women in the north. The NGO also supports the Asuda Protection Centre for Women, which deals with honour killings.

"The WADI mobile teams closely cooperate with these shelters. If they find women who are abused or suffer from domestic violence and they cannot solve their problems in the field they transfer them to one of these shelters," Abdulrachman said.

SITUATION OF WOMEN EVEN WORSE IN THE SOUTH

WADI also recently carried out an assessment in the south of the country. Having visited Al-Hillah, Amara and Al-Kut, its staff found that domestic violence was also widespread there. "The situation is much worse in the south; it has been completely neglected, and the fact that there is no data on this issue shows that there is no assistance for women suffering there," the project coordinator for WADI, Thomas Osten Sacken, told IRIN from Frankfurt, Germany, after ending a visit to southern Iraq.

Citing factors tending to encourage domestic violence, Abdulrachman said Islamic values and traditions were very strong in central and southern Iraq, thereby blocking many attempts to help women there.

"We think a close exchange of ideas between the different regions has to take place. The women from central/south Iraq should be given the possibility to study the development in the north," Osten Sacken said.

The NGO has started an exchange programme with NGOs from the south, encouraging them to visit the north and learn from the experience of staff working in the centres run by them.

"Women are still intimidated and do not speak freely about these problems. It will be very difficult to create an environment of trust, in which women of the south can start to tell their stories and what happened to them during the time of the Ba'th regime," he added.


WADI e.V. | tel.: (+49) 069-57002440 | fax (+49) 069-57002444
http://www.wadinet.de | e-mail: