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Speaking Up for Women

Heartland Alliance is protecting women in Iraq and confronting cultural gender-based violence

October 8, 2009

Sherizaan Minwalla can tell you stories about women in Iraq. A daughter facing marriage to a man her father's age as payment for a debt. A woman raped, abused, and forced into criminal activity by her husband. A wife who dishonored the family by being charged with adultery, threatened with death by her husband, her father, and her brother.

But more and more of Minwalla's stories have happy endings. The women described above were all assisted by Heartland Alliance's gender-based violence (GBV) prevention program in Iraq. Culturally sensitive mediation convinced the groom-to-be to call off the wedding, for example, and the program's attorneys successfully defended the other women in court—then social workers helped them start new lives because they could not return home due to the stigma of even being charged.

"The rates of violence against women are so high here and women's lives are so restricted. There's an extreme level of control," says Minwalla. Even in the relatively progressive northern Kurdistan region, she says, the issues her program tackles include female genital mutilation, honor killings, and human trafficking.

Heartland Alliance has been working to build a mental health system in Iraq since 2003, an outgrowth of our mental health services in the U.S. and programs for refugees, including survivors of torture. Minwalla's work with Heartland Alliance as an immigration law attorney working with victims of domestic violence in Chicago inspired her to join the gender violence program in Iraq in 2005.

"We work here with mediators, lawyers, and social workers who are part of the community, and they are helping many women," Minwalla says. "Local legal institutions are too weak, though, and protection is sometimes dependent on the will and interests of influential personalities. And so we are also one of the voices pushing for legal and enforcement improvements—so women can live without fear."

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