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Over 4,000 arranged marital engagements annulled in Iraqi
Kurdistan's Raniya |
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Over 4,000 arranged marital engagements
annulled in Iraqi Kurdistan's Raniya
7.4.2012 |
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April 7, 2012
SULAIMANIYAH,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — Some 2,000 cases of
arranged marital engagements were annulled over a
five-year period in Raniya city because they were
made when the engaged were only children.
After the human rights office in Raparin district
realized that there was a great number of boys and
girls who had been named to marry each other when
they were only children, the office formed a
committee in 2004 to follow up the subject, said
office director Luqman Haji.
Haji added that within five years the committee
negotiated with the relatives of the engaged boys
and girls and managed to annul the engagement of
more than 4,000 individuals "upon their request and
after the consent of their relatives".
The official said his office also arranged for
awareness raising courses and seminars on the issue
of arranged marriages.
"But it's more than two years that because of
dissolving the Kurdistan Ministry of Human Rights…
we've stopped such activities."
The ministry is supposed to be replaced by a board.
But the board has yet to be formed two and a half
years since the ministry was scrapped.
Haji said that despite his office having stopped its
activities, there are some women's organizations
along with the Kurdistan Islamic Scientists' Union
that perpetually advice the public on the issue of
arranged marriages.
"Therefore, we feel that the phenomenon is
[reducing] or dropping in numbers," he added.
In Kurdish culture there are different kinds of
arranged marriages. Sometimes parents decide for
their very young or even newborn sons or daughters
to marry each other when they grow up. Sometimes a
small girl is married off to an older man.
In other cases a brother or a father agrees to marry
off his own sister or daughter to another man in
exchange for that man's sister or daughter for
himself.
Sometimes when the fight between two families ends
in murder,www.ekurd.net
one girl - or more - on the murderer's side is given
to a family of the murdered "to wash the blood".
All such trends are diminishing however, and are
observed only among those with tribal mentality.
Raniya and Qala Diza
are "a true hell for women and girls", after 18
cases of murder, self-immolation and domestic
violence have been reported in just two months, and
little action has been taken.
The latest report from a human rights group says the
region, northwest of Sulaimaniyah, is quickly
becoming one of the most dangerous places for women
in the Middle East and effective and wide-ranging
strategies, including calling a state of emergency,
are urgently needed.
By Dilshad Saifaddin
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency,
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