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MADRE Op-Ed: Women's Human Rights in Iraq

By Yifat Susskind

March 2004

One year ago, as the US aimed its bombs at Baghdad, Bush promised Iraqis, "We will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free." So how are Iraqi women and families faring a year into their liberation? On nearly every count of Bush's magnanimous pledge, Iraqi women judge themselves to be worse off than before the US invasion.

Across Iraq, US bombs destroyed homes, hospitals, water treatment plants, food crops and other basics that women rely on to keep their families safe and healthy. Despite the billions in US tax dollars allocated to Iraqi "reconstruction," little has been done to meet the needs of women and families. Instead, the corporations that are making a killing are mainly rebuilding infrastructure needed by the US military or to attract foreign investment. US plans to privatize every aspect of Iraq's economy and infrastructure (a violation of the 1907 Hague Convention) constitute a long-term threat to Iraqi women's social and economic rights.

Already, conditions of daily life for most women have deteriorated since the US took over. Acute malnutrition has doubled, along with the price of certain food staples and cooking fuel. Farmers (many of them women) report that they cannot grow food because unexploded US cluster bombs litter their fields. Across the country, drinking water is contaminated, infectious disease is on the rise, electricity is sporadic and streets are clogged with rising piles of uncollected garbage. As those primarily responsible for meeting the basic needs of the population, Iraqi women have been forced to intensify their work hauling water, preparing food and caring for children traumatized by bombing, disease and hunger.

Since the US occupation began, ongoing armed attacks and a spike in violence against women �including a sharp rise in abduction, rape and sexual slavery� has curtailed all aspects of Iraqi women's lives, preventing many from leaving home to go to work or even to obtain food, water or medical treatment. Girls are being kept out of school and many women are now forbidden by their families to be in public without a male escort. One source of the unprecedented violence against women are the gangs of religious extremists that now "patrol" many Iraqi communities, arbitrarily beating and harassing women who do not dress or behave to their liking. These reactionaries jumped to fill the power vacuum created by the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein, with virtually no opposition from US authorities. In fact, those implementing Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom have ignored or undermined the country's more democratic, secular forces, as evidenced by the US treatment of Iraq's formidable and long-standing women's movement.

Despite Bush's talk about reflecting the diversity of Iraqi society in new, "democratic" governing structures, almost no effort has been made to guarantee that women �who make up about 60% of the population� are fairly represented in government. In fact, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) dismissed demands from women's organizations, including calls to create a women's ministry; appoint women to the drafting committee of Iraq's new constitution; guarantee that 40% of all CPA appointees are women; and pass laws codifying women's rights and criminalizing domestic violence. On the contrary, CPA chief Paul Bremer personally appointed several reactionary Muslim clerics to the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council, knowingly empowering leaders with a stated commitment to restricting women's human rights.

A year after Bush's promise to the Iraqi people, newspaper headlines attest to the ongoing lack of state security in Iraq. Less examined is the status of human security, the right of Iraqis to have their basic needs met and their human rights respected, protected and fulfilled. Iraqi women are demanding these resources and rights, sending the world a powerful message: namely, that state security can only be achieved by guaranteeing human security and that any legitimate governing authority has the obligation to fulfill women's demands for human rights.