by KARLOS ZURUTUZA
An interview with Hanaa Edwar, general secretary of Iraqi Al Amal Association and head of the Iraqi Women Network
BAGHDAD, Jan 16 2013 (IPS) – From full literacy declared in the seventies, Iraq is down to 40 percent literacy for women. From the first woman prime minister and the first woman judge in the Middle East in 1959, Iraq has slipped to a place where an abnormal number of widows struggle, and where child marriages are on the rise. Hanaa Edwar is putting up a fight to win Iraqi women their freedoms again.
Q: What kind of work does your organisation do to protect women rights?
A: Through Al Amal we have been administrating the Iraqi Women Network, an office that promotes outreach amongst local women organisations by enhancing relations with many international organisations as well as involving women in different activities and training courses. One of our biggest achievements has been the Parliament quota thanks to which 25 percent of the MPs are female. Now we’re working on a new campaign in the frame of the Arab Spring to protect personal freedoms.
Q: What are the most pressing problems for Iraqi women today?
A: We represent more than 55 percent of the Iraqi population but we are buried in a society which has been exclusively drawn on male patterns. We cannot see any women leading political blocks or occupying high positions in the government. However, I would say that marginalisation of the local women is due to cultural reasons more than political.
A painful issue is that of the million and a half widows in the country left by the war. Before 2003, Iraq was already full of them but their number increased after the invasion in 2003. They live in very dire conditions and they can hardly make a living with a 100 dollars pension.
Q: Wasn’t Iraq a pioneer country in the region in social development?
A: In 1959 Iraq had the first woman minister and the first female judge in the whole Middle East. One of our biggest achievements that year was the personal status law, according to which marriages would be registered in court. Today a big number of marriage contracts are illegal, so women are left in a very fragile situation because it leads to many legal problems which also affect their children.
Speaking about children, girls are often forced to marry at the early age of 10 or 12 and, today, we even have the ‘temporary marriage’, something which has obviously been imported from Iran. Worrying cases of domestic violence crimes are on the rise amid the government’s total indifference. The government is supporting religious orthodoxy which imposes strict dress codes. Women not wearing hijab – the Islamic veil – are being discriminated against and, what is worse, girls are being brought out from schools and mothers from their jobs.
Q: Is the women quota in Parliament working as expected?
A: There is a representative share of 25 percent thanks to which there are 84 women in the Iraqi parliament. However, most of them got their seats due to their personal affinity with the leaders of the political parties, and not because of merit. It’s doubtless true that, despite the difficulties, there is still a large number of women able to hold these positions with responsibility, but most are relegated to the background.
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