International Law Obligates the US to Uphold the Rights of Iraqi Women: An Open Letter to the US Ambassador to Iraq
MADRE, 27 July 2005

To the Honorable Ambassador Khalilzad,

MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, emphatically supports the call of Iraqi women’s organizations for the immediate repeal of Article 14 of Iraq’s draft constitution. As you are aware, Article 14 seeks to replace Iraq's 1959 personal status laws, which are among the most progressive in the Middle East, with Sharia, or Islamic law. As such, Article 14 poses a grave threat to the rights of Iraqi women, to core principles of democratic governance, and to the primacy of international law. In light of this danger, we were heartened to hear your comments of July 25, indicating that the United States will work to guarantee the rights of Iraqi women.

In fact, the United States, as the occupying power in Iraq, is legally obligated under the 1907 Hague Convention to ensure the human rights of Iraq’s civilian population, including the full range of women’s human rights. Unfortunately, the US has failed to meet this obligation. Indeed, the state of Iraqi women’s human rights is far worse today, under US occupation, than it was under the notoriously repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. Unlike today’s US-backed National Assembly, the former Ba’ath government guaranteed basic rights to women—rights that were won by the Iraqi women’s movement before the United States propelled the Ba’ath Party to power in 1963. It is widely recognized that the Ba’ath government utilized women’s rights only to consolidate its own power, incorporating women into the workforce and the public sphere at large so that they could be more easily mobilized on behalf of the State. Yet, the fact remains that before being “liberated” by the US forces, Iraqi women enjoyed rights to education, employment, freedom of movement, equal pay for equal work, and universal day care, as well as the rights to inherit and own property, choose their own husbands, vote, and hold public office. Ironically, these fundamental rights stand to be abolished in a “democratic” Iraq ushered into being by the United States.

The United States bears direct responsibility for the current climate of hostility to Iraqi women’s rights. In 2003, Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) chief Paul Bremer personally appointed reactionary Muslim clerics to the Iraqi Governing Council, empowering leaders with a stated commitment to restricting women’s rights. In the period leading up to the election of the National Assembly, the US also refused to honor a series of demands by Iraqi women’s organizations, including calls to: create a women’s ministry; appoint women to the drafting committee of Iraq’s interim constitution and guarantee that 40 percent of CPA appointees were women; pass laws codifying women’s rights and criminalizing domestic violence; and uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1325, mandating that women be included at all levels of decision-making in situations of peacemaking and post-war reconstruction.

Rather than support the women’s movement and other democratic forces in Iraqi society, the United States has chosen to court right-wing extremists who—like religious fundamentalists in the US and around the world—use religion as a means of asserting a reactionary political agenda that begins with the subjugation of women within the family. Indeed, it is no accident that the first battle in the drafting of Iraq’s new constitution is over personal status laws governing family issues of marriage, divorce, and women’s inheritance and property rights.
Article 14, which you have rightly condemned, is the product of a political calculus that trades women’s rights for support from religious conservatives. As you know, this devil’s bargain has resulted in serious human rights abuses, the erosion of democratic institutions, and civil war in countries around the world. We urge you, therefore, to stand in support of Iraqi women who are calling on the United States to meet its legal obligations under the Hague Convention, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 to uphold the internationally recognized rights of Iraqi women under US occupation. The capacity of Iraqi women to enjoy the full range of human rights is at stake.

Sincerely,
Vivian Stromberg
Executive Director, MADRE

Contact: Irene Schneeweis, Media Coordinator at (212) 627-0444; email: media@madre.org