It is known for many around the world the issues women are facing in the Middle East, and particularly Iraq. From personal experience, living in Iraq, with a rebellion mentality to challenge orthodoxies, life becomes impossible of feminists and women rights’ activists to stand for their values without being persecuted. More recently, the aftermath of the 2003 war has prompted a new feminist wave, which has resulted in shifts in the dynamics of women’s rights, leading to stagnation rather than advancement in the long-awaited liberation.
Within the recent revolutionary societal movement, the dynamics have changed toward worsening women conditions as they face more dramatic changes in terms of deteriorating civil rights. A new feminist wave has emerged with women taking leadership roles and engaging in political activism as witnessed in the Iraqi peaceful protests (2019-2021). Yet, while assuming bigger activism roles, women rights’ violations are on the rise within such civil unrest. In this backdrop, the report of the United Nations Human Rights Committee provides evidence on how female demonstrators have faced more intense repression among all protests. Those women receive public rebuke from prominent religious authorities for defying established gender standards and advocating for women’s rights. As always, the government has failed in preventing violence, and in investigating the perpetuating crimes against women, enabling worsening conditions. In consequence, a persistent pattern of women rights violations seems in continuum.
On a societal level, women are continuously facing other issues beside demonization, sexism, and degradation of their rights. Within an ecosystem defined by continuation of conflict, rise of terrorism and extremism, and the legal entrenchment of tribal values, women are suffering more than before. All this has resulted in high levels of physical and sexual violence, as well as the increasingly emerging toxic phenomena and practices of discrimination and inequality. These characteristics, coupled with and reinforced by misogynist social and cultural norms, protect criminals from necessary consequent punishment.
Collectively, as women began to realize and demand the long-overdue liberation from their oppressive governments and society, they are met with escalating violence. When factoring in the rise of assassinations, abductions of women activists as the Iraqi parliamentary elections approach, speculation about the future of women rights inclines more towards intensified violence. Unfortunately, women are paying the price of their fight for basic rights.