Iraq
Country Overview
Since 1991, Iraqis have endured ongoing air strikes and 12 years of US-led economic sanctions that resulted in the deaths of over five hundred thousand children.1 In 2003, the US invaded Iraq in violation of the UN Charter and has continued to defy international law and violate the human rights of Iraqi women and families. 2 The invasion has resulted in the deaths of more than one million Iraqis, empowered Islamist extremists, and spawned a refugee crisis and a civil war.
Women's Human Rights in Post-invasion Iraq
Iraqi women cite the lack of personal security as the biggest threat they face since the US invasion. According to the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the US, as an occupying power, was responsible for the human rights and security of Iraqi civilians. But US forces failed to meet this responsibility.
Rape and abductions of women have risen sharply since the invasion. So have "honor killings," in which rape survivors and women who violate conservative social mores are murdered by family members to restore the family's "honor." Many Iraqi women are fighting simultaneously against the US occupation and the rising tide of Islamism, which seeks to monopolize interpretations of Islam in pursuit of a reactionary social and political agenda.
Iraqi women say that the gains won by the Iraqi women's movement in the first half of the 1900s—maintained to a large extent through 1990—are being rolled back.
End Notes
1. Crossette, Barbara, "Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N. Reports," New York Times, December 1, 1995, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E5DA1139F932A35751C1A963958260
2. The United Nations Charter states unequivocally that only the Security Council can authorize the use of military force. Articles 41 and 42 of the UN Charter state that no country has the right to unilaterally enforce UN resolutions. See Tearing up the Rules: The Illegality of Invading Iraq by the Center for Economic and Social Rights
