Where are Iraqi women today?
As I sat beside the Tigris River in Baghdad on a hot July evening, the air is still, the dust has settled, and the call for prayers is echoing over the river as it reflects lights from relatively new restaurants. I visited my mother’s grave yesterday and learned that her tombstone was destroyed by a missile 2 years ago in one of the clashes between the militias and the US troops. “Not even the dead are spared from the bombings in Iraq,” I thought to myself. But at least my mother is not witnessing the pain many Iraqi women are witnessing as they try to find space for themselves in the “new Iraq.” Today in Iraq, women have no one unified reality. At the same time as many women increase participation in the political sector-Iraq’s Parliament and local councils are required to have 25% women representation-thousands more are experiencing brutal hardship and extreme poverty. There are now more destitute women in Iraq than ever before-estimates of the number of war widows range from one to
As I sat beside the Tigris River in Baghdad on a hot July evening, the air is still, the dust has settled, and the call for prayers is echoing over the river as it reflects lights from relatively new restaurants. I visited my mother’s grave yesterday and learned that her tombstone was destroyed by a missile 2 years ago in one of the clashes between the militias and the US troops. “Not even the dead are spared from the bombings in Iraq,” I thought to myself. But at least my mother is not witnessing the pain many Iraqi women are witnessing as they try to find space for themselves in the “new Iraq.” Today in Iraq, women have no one unified reality. At the same time as many women increase participation in the political sector-Iraq’s Parliament and local councils are required to have 25% women representation-thousands more are experiencing brutal hardship and extreme poverty. There are now more destitute women in Iraq than ever before-estimates of the number of war widows range from one to
