In Iraq, the number of legal actions involving women has rapidly increased: in 2021 they were 148,236, compared to 115,063 in 2020. This is an impressive increase, according to a newspaper article published by the Iraqi Supreme Council of the Judiciary. In most cases, these are divorces, with various reasons: the most frequent are early marriages and sharing a home with the husband’s family. In 2020 the causes for obtaining the possibility to remarry had been 5,710, and they rose to 7,022 in 2021.
The rise in divorces exacerbates the clash between women’s advocacy organizations and the Islamist parties in government and parliament. Six hundred people and non-governmental organizations supported the protest of the association called the Women’s Civic Assembly against the modification of article 57 of the law on personal status, which would give custody of the children in the event of divorce to the father rather than the mother. The paradoxical aspect is that the promoters of the amendment justify it with the possibility that the children are molested by the second husband of the mother.
In black
In northern Iraq, in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, feminist activists celebrated March 8 wearing black, following the murder of a young woman, killed by her brother. It is the fifteenth crime against women in the past two months in Iraqi Kurdistan. Not a good start.
The victim, Eman Sami Maghdid, began her career as a TV presenter of a religious program during Ramadan wearing the hijab. At some point she had changed direction and had begun to defend women’s freedom by campaigning on social networks with a new name, Maria. In a phone call with a news media, her younger brother said: “I fired eight shots at her before she escaped.”
Her name has become central to the campaign against violence against women carried out by protesters dressed in black.
(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)