Study: Iraqi widows struggle in new roles as breadwinners
An Iraqi woman who sells incense and candles to support her children says, "to work is to preserve your honor."
"A whole generation of Iraqis are at risk. Mothers are being forced to make tough choices, such as whether to pay for their children to go to school and receive health care, or to pay for private power and water services. These are choices no mother should have to make. And they are not only threatening individual families, they are also threatening the future of Iraq itself," Hobbs said.
Here are some of the survey results.
• Security and safety are the top concerns of nearly 60 percent of women.
• More than 40 percent of respondents said their security situation worsened last year.
• 55 percent had been victims of violence since 2003.
• Some 45 percent of women said their income was worse in 2008 than in 2007 and 2006.
• 69 percent said access to water was worse or the same as in in 2006 and 2007.
• 80 percent said access to electricity was more difficult than or the same as in 2007.
• Nearly half of the women said access to quality health care was more difficult in 2008 compared with 2006 and 2007.
• 40 percent of women with children reported that their sons and daughters were not attending school.
And the children of Iraq will be those the children of the rest of the world will have to deal with, that's Our Legacy!!
A few Photo's of the Women/Widows of Iraq
On "International Women's Day"
In her own words: Iraqi women talk about their greatest concerns and challenges
The plight of women in Iraq today has gone largely ignored, both within Iraqi society and by the international community. For more than five years, headlines have been dominated by political and social turmoil, the chaos of conflict and widespread violence. This has overshadowed the abysmal state of the civilian population’s day-to-day lives, a result of that very turmoil and violence.
Behind the headlines, essential services have collapsed, families have been torn apart and women in particular have fallen victim to the consequences of war. The specific hardships that some of Iraq’s most vulnerable individuals cope with on a daily basis, as told by them, have overwhelmingly gone unheard.
Download full paper (PDF)
Iraq's Unspeakable Crime:
Mothers Pimping Daughters
She goes by "Hinda," but that's not her real name. That's what she's called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country. They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky, auburn-haired woman is an undercover human rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.
