Iraq

Persons with Disabilities in Iraq: For the disabled population as a whole, the violent history of the country since the 1980s have contributed to an estimated 2 million Iraqi's now considered persons with disabilities. The direct effect of violence from these wars, competing demands on scarce human and financial resources has reduced attention to primary, secondary and tertiary prevention mechanisms, which result in conditions that exacerbate disabilities. Based on family stigmas, disabled Iraqis are often hidden away by their families. The disability community is also stratified due to the legacy of policies instituted by the previous regime. Saddam Hussein’s regime compensated the war veterans for his own political benefit; while the disabled children and youth population lacked much of the essential services, whether in education, rehabilitation, or early intervention. Although the disability community is trying today to speak with one voice politically, the constitutional language regulating the rights of people with disabilities is weak. This is not surprising, since most persons with disabilities (PWDs) associations in Iraq lack the technical assistance to address the needs of the entire disability community. 

Women’s Rights in Iraq: There is a silent humanitarian crisis occurring in Iraq as profound and traumatic as the suicide bombings regularly covered by the media, but not sufficiently dramatic to warrant equal media attention. It is the crisis of Iraqi women who have suffered from gender based violence. Despite the Iraqi Constitution's guarantees which are meant to protect citizens from violence, the rise of religious and tribal conservatism (which supports the resolution of family issues by religious and tribal decree), lawlessness, and a flawed law enforcement system have contributed to the exposure of women and girls to violence and coercion. The United Nations Iraq Analysis Unit (IAU) estimates the national percentage of women who have been victimized by gender-based ‘physical’ violence at 22%, or 4 million women. In Kurdistan, high levels of violence against women and young girls have reached endemic proportions. In Kirkuk Province, the cases of self-immolations by women are 279 (compared to 117 in 2009) and general cases of violence against women are over 2,000. In Iraq, fathers and brothers can have their convictions reduced to 6 months’ probation if they claim that they have killed their daughters or sisters in the name of “family honor.” 

Youth Participation in Iraq: 60% of Iraq’s population is under the age of 25, a population that has come of age over the last seven troubling years. Young people are the greatest consumers of the new technologies and since April of 2003 have moved from stifled freedom of enquiry or debate to a demographic now connecting to their peers in Iraq and overseas. At the same time, many Iraqi youth have been or currently are members in Iraq’s militias. Under the Baath party, Iraq had a strong youth movement associated with the government. The main Shia opposition parties, which started to coalesce after the Baathist take over in Iraq in 1963 with the overthrow of Col. Qasim, also had strong youth movements. After the Iraqi Communist Party was all but crushed by 1965, young Shias gravitated to the religiously oriented Shia opposition groups established by Shia clerics such as Muhammed Baqir al-Sadr, the father-in-law of Muqtada al-Sadr, and Muhammed Baqir al-Hakim. After 2003, Iraq has developed an emerging civil society with several thousand NGOs now established. Over, 1,000 of these NGOs focus on youth empowerment and awareness building. The fight over the future of Iraqi will pit the Mahdi Militia, which is trying to emulate Hizbollah in Lebanon by developing a large youth corps within its movement, against these nascent NGOs which support a pluralistic and democratic Iraq for all sectarian and ethnic groups.

Ethnic Tension in Iraq: Despite recent improvements in security, life for ordinary Iraqis continues to be marred by violence and insecurity, particularly in the geographic area that starts from Baghdad and goes through Diyala, Salah al-Din, Kirkuk, and Ninewa. This “divide” contains the volatile cities of Kirkuk and Mosul where Arabs (Sunnis and Shias), Turkmen, Kurds, and Christians live together in a volatile ethnic/sectarian mix. With the final status of the “disputed territories” between KRG and Iraq still unresolved, this large swath of territory will continue to be unstable. The natural demographic pattern of the region was completely changed during the 1980s when Saddam Hussein’s regime forced hundreds of thousands of Kurds from their homes and settled them in central and southern Iraq. Hussein then initiated an “Arabization” campaign which encouraged and sometimes forced Arabs to move to the northern regions of Iraq; dividing and disempowering many communities. With Hussein’s fall from power, transplanted Kurds began to return and the issues of land, resettlement and returnees quickly enflamed the sentiments of the non-Kurdish populations.