UN Told Iraq's Hidden Women's Shelters in Jeopardy
UN Told Iraq's Hidden Women's Shelters in Jeopardy
An Iraqi women's rights advocate is asking the U.N. Security Council to pressure her government to change its laws about women in the civil-war torn state, including removing obstacles for those operating shelters for women fleeing ISIS.
A woman hangs out washing to dry at an informal shelter for Yazidis refugees who fled ISIS attacks in Iraq.
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--Yanar Mohammed, a women's rights advocate in Iraq, is known for the "underground railroad" of shelters she runs for women escaping ISIS. After a year of struggling to keep the shelters open and safe from police and government officials, who treat these shelters as illegal, Mohammed is now pressing the international community to also take action against the violence faced by women in her country. "ISIS's use of sexual and gender-based violence have been discussed at length in this chamber," Mohammed, founder of the Baghdad-based Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, said last week when addressing the U.N. Security Council. "Yet civil society efforts which seek to combat this violence are stifled."
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She said in her Oct. 13 address that the Iraqi government has not been asked, demanded or forced by the U.N. to apply any of the resolution's provisions. She hopes the Security Council will pressure her government to change its laws concerning women in the civil-war torn state, including policies that hinder her own organization and others from operating women's shelters and radio stations. In the absence of government-sponsored services in Iraq, the most vulnerable populations depend on local women's organizations, Mohammed added.
Mohammed was first interviewed by Women's eNews in June 2014, when ISIS had just seized Mosul and violence against women surged with their mounting territorial control. At that time she corroborated reports that women forced into "jihad marriages" with ISIS members were committing suicide, which has since continued. Her shelters provide a safe space for female ISIS survivors, especially in Kerbala, where the militant group targets women who do not have male family members.
People thought ISIS was a passing threat in Iraq and that kidnappings of women were exaggerated, Mohammed said in a phone interview from New York. But today, the number of Iraqi women kidnapped by the militant group has climbed to 4,000, of which 3,000 come from the Yazidi religious community in northern Iraq, she said. For two years, ISIS has been organizing a systematic campaign of human enslavement and the trafficking of women and girls to fund themselves, including in government-controlled areas.
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http://womensenews.org/story/war/151018/un-told-iraqs-hidden-womens-shelters-in-jeopardy