Progress Amid Resistance

182 WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAorder or morality. But women took to the streets to defend their interestsas early as 2004, demonstrating against the proposed Resolution 137 ofthe Transitional Administrative Law, which would have repealed the 1959personal status code and placed decisions over family matters in the handsof religious authorities. At the same time, women demanded a firm quotafor representation in the parliament. After a series of peaceful rallies andrelated media coverage, Resolution 137 was withdrawn and women weregranted the 25 percent parliamentary quota. Many Iraqi women consideredthat victory a first step in demanding more rights. Since no womenwere included on the committee drafting the 2005 constitution, activistsand NGOs organized lectures, workshops, and meetings across the countryto raise awareness of the importance of women’s rights.When Resolution 137 returned in the new constitution in the formof Article 41, women went to the streets again, successfully demandingthe article’s suspension. The deterioration of Iraq’s security situation—particularly after the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Dome,an important Shiite shrine in Samarra, triggered an escalation in sectarianviolence—prevented further peaceful demonstrations on behalf of women’srights. Yet activists and NGOs have continued to arrange meetingsand workshops inside and outside the country, training women in leadership,debating, and organizational skills.Women similarly used media outlets to promote their interests afterthe fall of the Ba’athist regime in 2003, only to face violence and regressionas security worsened. Many members of NGOs were threatened orkilled for appearing on television or radio, or for criticizing Islamist rulesimposed on women. In the autonomous Kurdish region, journalists whowrote unfavorable articles about the government and security forces werearrested, and some were killed. In other parts of Iraq, both male and femalejournalists were beaten, arrested, and killed for their writing on insurgents,the government, or political parties. The authorities did very little to investigatesuch cases, and to make matters worse, the government proposednew laws that would tighten its control over political parties, NGOs, andthe media. The government also put media outlets under close scrutiny toencourage self-censorship, and at one point barred journalists from coveringsessions of the parliament.In February 2004, Yanar Mohamed, a prominent women’s rights activistand founder of OWFI, received death threats for campaigning to repealResolution 137; she went into hiding but kept working. Another leading