Asteriel🪞🕯️ :
To the world,
How many Iraqi women and girls must suffer before their voices are truly heard? How many more must lose their safety, education, freedom, or even their lives before the international community pays attention?
Women and girls in Iraq continue to face serious forms of violence and discrimination, including domestic violence, threats, forced marriage, child marriage, sexual violence, harassment, and so-called “honor”-based violence. Many survivors also face stigma, social pressure, and barriers to obtaining effective protection and justice.
Women who speak about abuse or demand their basic rights can face intimidation, harassment, defamation, threats, and attempts to silence them. A woman should never have to choose between her safety and her right to speak, study, work, leave an abusive relationship, or make decisions about her own future.
Recent changes to Iraq’s Personal Status Law and the introduction of the Ja’afari Personal Status Code have also raised serious concerns among Iraqi women’s rights organizations and international human rights bodies. Concerns include provisions affecting marriage, divorce, inheritance, and the guardianship and care of children, as well as the possibility of different legal protections depending on the personal-status system governing a family.
We are not asking the world to speak for Iraqi women. We are asking the world to listen to Iraqi women who are already speaking.
We are asking for the fundamental rights of every woman and girl to be protected:
the right to life and safety,
the right to education,
the right to work,
the right to freely and knowingly consent to marriage,
the right to protection from violence,
the right to seek justice,
and the right to live with dignity and equality before the law.
Please listen to Iraqi women.
Please amplify their voices.
Please support independent organizations documenting violations and defending women’s and girls’ rights.
Our lives should not become international news only after another tragedy has occurred.
We deserve protection before tragedy—not sympathy afterward.
2026-09-29 13:09:38