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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Ministry of Interior has confirmed a woman was shot by her former husband in the southern city of Basra after shocking video footage of her murder went viral on social media.
The woman was shot by her ex-husband due to “personal issues,” the interior ministry said, adding that the killer fled the scene. The murder, caught by a surveillance camera, showed a woman standing outside her home chatting with another woman, before being shot by an approaching gunman.
An arrest warrant has been issued for the ex-husband, the ministry said.
A 2012 planning ministry study found that at least 36 percent of married women reported experiencing some form of psychological abuse from their husbands, 23 percent verbal abuse, 6 percent physical violence, and 9 percent sexual violence.
Several UN agencies called on the Iraqi parliament last year to rapidly adopt an anti-domestic violence law amid a reported rise in domestic violence during the COVID-19 lockdown.
However, the bill has not been passed. While the country’s constitution forbids “all forms of violence and abuse in the family", laws also allow husbands to “discipline” their wives, allowing for abuse in the home.
Domestic violence has always plagued Iraq,” Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch said in April 2020. “We see case upon case of women and girls dying at the hands of their families, but Iraq's lawmakers have not done enough to save those lives.”
An Oxfam report published in June found that women across Iraq, including in Kirkuk and Sulaimani, were at heightened risk of domestic violence and gender-based violence as a result of the pandemic.
Correction: This piece incorrectly stated that the woman in question was shot dead by her husband. It has since been updated.
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