ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraqi women and girls are bearing the brunt of the social, political, and economic implications of the coronavirus pandemic, a new report from international NGO Oxfam has found. Surveying sample groups in Diyala, Kirkuk, and Sulaimani provinces, the report published Tuesday focuses on how the health crisis and subsequent events have impacted the “rights, well-being and representation” of women across the country. “Women in three sample areas of the country are facing an increase in the burden of domestic work and caring responsibilities, a heightened risk of domestic and gender-based violence, and greater loss of economic livelihoods and autonomy,” reads the report, which also lists access to health and support services, as well as limited decision-making power, as issues women face. Coronavirus was hardly the start of gendered discrimination and violence in Iraq. Women across the country have been faced with increased precarity due to years of conflict, socio-economic and political instability. Several high profile cases of gender-based violence in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region made headlines during the last several months, in line with news of a rise in domestic violence during coronavirus lockdowns around the globe. According to the United Nations, 46 percent of married women in Iraq have survived some form of abuse at home, of which a third report physical and sexual assault. A participant in Oxfam’s survey attributes the increase in domestic violence to men not being able to go work or socialize, leading to a spiral of economic hardship and frustration. "Men have little patience. […] Before, when men got angry they could go out and after a while forget about the issue, but now they can't go out and [they] have to stay together, and that creates more tension,” one male respondent, aged 36, told Oxfam researchers. Iraq does not have any specific laws to protect against gender-based violence, which disproportionately affects women. Several UN agencies in April called on the Iraqi Parliament to rapidly adopt an Anti-Domestic Violence Law amid the reported rise in domestic violence during the COVID-19 lockdown. Women’s rights campaigners have lobbied Baghdad to pass an Anti-Domestic Violence Law for years, but the draft bill currently lies dormant in parliament.
