Progress Amid Resistance

IRAQ 1895In 2006, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki instructed the ministry to stop providing mortalityfigures to the United Nations as well. See Colum Lynch, “Iraq Aims to LimitMortality Data,” Washington Post, October 20, 2006.6Timothy Williams, “Iraq’s War Widows Face Dire Need with Little Aid,” New YorkTimes, February 22, 2009.7Iraq Legal Development Project, The Status of Women in Iraq, 62.8Afif Sarhan, “Hitmen Charge $100 a Victim,” The Observer, November 30, 2008.9Basim al-Shara, “Honor Killings Remain Above the Law in Iraq,” Kuwait Times, April 9,2008, http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTIyNzM4ODE3Ng==.10Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2008 Human Rights Report: Iraq(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, February 25, 2009).11Division for the Advancement of Women, “Declarations, Reservations and Objectionsto CEDAW,” UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/reservations-country.htm.12Missy Ryan, “War-Weary Aid Groups Weigh Risk, Need in Iraq,” Reuters, November21, 2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSRYA739414; Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit, “The Humanitarian Situation in Iraq: In ter-Agency Fact Sheet,” UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August2009, http://www.uniraq.org/documents/Factsheet-EnglishR190809.pdf.13Article 17 of the 1959 personal status code.14Alexandra Zavis, “Iraq Marriages Are a Casualty of War,” Los Angeles Times, April 13,2008; Hazim al-Shara, “Mixed Marriages Survive Conflict,” Institute for War and PeaceReporting, September 24, 2008.15Iraq Legal Development Project, The Status of Women in Iraq, 96–97, 108.16Mut’ah marriages are not specifically addressed in the 1959 personal status code.17Judith Colp Rubin, “Women in the New Iraq,” 44; “Iraq: Women’s Groups Blast‘Temporary’ Marriages,” IRIN, January 23, 2006, http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=26074; Isobel Coleman, “Women, Islam, and the New Iraq,” ForeignAffairs (January/February 2006).18Judith Colp Rubin, “Women in the New Iraq,” 44.19Divorce procedures are covered in Articles 34–50 of the 1959 personal status code.20“Iraq-Syria: Sex Traffickers Target Women in War-Torn Iraq,” IRIN, October 26, 2006.21Rania Abouzeid “Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Their Daughters,” Time,March 7, 2009, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883696,00.html?xid=rss-world#ixzz0WVVBISIA.22“Kurdistan Aziz: Another Victim of Stoning,” IKWRO, June 6, 2008, http://www.ikwro.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=298&Itemid=26.23“Iraq: ‘Honour Killings’ Persist in Kurdish North,” Integrated Regional InformationNetworks (IRIN), December 6, 2007, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75714.24Revolutionary Command Council Decision No. 488 of 1978 introduced the deathpenalty for certain cases of incest. Such offenses would now result in a penalty of lifeim prisonment under subsequent revisions to the laws pertaining to the death penalty.