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Draft to amend personal status law in
Iraqi Kurdistan
10.2.2007
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February 10, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq),
February 10, -- The Iraqi Kurdistan region
parliament's women's rights committee prepared a
draft to amend personal status law 188 of 1959 to be
submitted to parliament next March, a women's rights
advocate said on Saturday.
"The draft, reaching its final stages, includes
amendments on definition of marriage, polygamy,
divorce and noshooz (a woman-exclusive term in Islam
that means violation of marital duties)," the
committee chairperson, Bakhshan Zinka, said.
Zinka said the committee "has made good use of
drafts forwarded by civil society organizations and
human rights activists specialized in the sphere of
sharia (Muslim law) in the efforts to come up with
the draft law."
She said the committee has worked in accordance with
an approach to guarantee gender equality.
"Preparation of this draft was in line with the
constitution of Iraq's Kurdistan region, qualitative
developments in the Kurdish society and
international human rights covenants," said Zinka
No to Islamic Sharia law in Kurdistan! by
Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq
Ms. Mahmoud is coordinating an international
campaign to demand that the Kurdistan regional
government drop "Article 7" in the proposed
Kurdistan constitution. Article 7 would make Islamic
Sharia the official law of the land. The effect of
this language will be to institutionalize even more
discrimination and violence against women as well as
non-religious and non-Muslim ethnic groups leading
to further erosion of civil rights.
No to Islamic Sharia law in Kurdistan!
An appeal for help from Iraqi women
National Radical Women recently received an appeal
from Houzan Mahmoud, the representative abroad of
the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. As
international revolutionary feminists, RW has worked
in solidarity with this organization to create more
awareness of the dire situation facing women and
working people in Iraq due to the U.S. occupation
and growing Islamic fundamentalism unleashed by the
war.
Ms. Mahmoud is coordinating an international
campaign to demand that the Kurdistan regional
government drop "Article 7" in the proposed
Kurdistan constitution. Article 7 would make Islamic
Sharia the official law of the land. The effect of
this language will be to institutionalize even more
discrimination and violence against women as well as
non-religious and non-Muslim ethnic groups leading
to further erosion of civil rights. RW strongly
supports OWFI's call for a secular, egalitarian
constitution in Kurdistan, an end to gender
apartheid, and an immediate halt to the U.S.
occupation.
Three things you can do to help:
• Ask your friends, family and coworkers to sign
OWFI's online petition condemning Article 7 (click
on the link below) and pass it on far and wide to
your email lists and online contacts:
http://www.petitiononline.com/15122006/petition.html
.
• Write letters in support of OWFI's campaign to
repeal Article 7 and in favor of the separation of
religion from the state and education, as well as
equality and freedom for women. Please see the
attached call for where to email your letters of
support.
• Circulate this action alert and the attached call
for support letters to other concerned people,
contacts, women's groups, organizations, civil
liberties advocates, antiwar activists and unions.
For more information about OWFI, visit http://www.equalityiniraq.com
or email
info@equalityiniraq.com.
VOI | Agencies
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