New Kurdish organization to reduce violence against women

“Murder under any circumstances cannot be justified, and yet in most eastern societies, where women are considered a symbol of weakness, the execution of a woman does not provoke a second thought,” asserts Aram Eissa, columnist for Soma: An Iraqi-Kurdish Digest.

On July 4 2007, in the Kurdish region of Slemani, a new administration that specializes in violence against women was established in order to change the current Iraqi criminal law, in place since the days of Saddam Hussein, which handles crimes against women as ordinary crimes.

According to Colonel Nareman Abdulla Qadir, the head of this new organization, “statistics show that these procedures are not enough to stop or even to reduce the number of crimes against women.”

The administration’s mandate includes pressuring the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) “to take stronger legal measures” against this violence, as well as “chasing up and investigating every single case involving violence against women.”

The organization has also called for a campaign to raise awareness of domestic violence.

The problem faced by the administration is how to differentiate between ordinary crimes that happen to have been committed against women, and crimes that target women specifically. This task, Qadir says, “should be delegated to women’s organizations.”

It has been asserted that the creation of a separate group to deal specifically with women’s issues can lead to women being ignored by all other sectors of government. It must be hoped, therefore, that people recognize that, in Qadir’s words, “putting an end to violent crimes against women is the collective responsibility of all members of society.”

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