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Human Rights Watch conducted on-the-ground research in April , visiting seven cities across Iraq and interviewing activists, lawyers, journalists, religious leaders, detainees former and current , security officers, victims of violence, and ordinary Iraqis. We found that, beyond the continuing violence and crimes associated with it, human rights abuses are commonplace.

This report presents those findings regarding violations of the rights of women and other vulnerable populations, the right to freedom of expression, and the right to be free from torture and ill-treatment in the period. The deterioration of security has promoted a rise in tribal customs and religiously-inflected political extremism, which have had a deleterious effect on women's rights, both inside and outside the home. For Iraqi women, who enjoyed some of the highest levels of rights protection and social participation in the region before , these have been heavy blows.

Militias promoting misogynist ideologies have targeted women and girls for assassination, and intimidated them to stay out of public life. Increasingly, women and girls are victimized in their own homes, sometimes killed by their fathers, brothers and husbands for a wide variety of perceived transgressions that allegedly shame the family or tribe. If they seek official protection from violence in the home, women risk harassment and abuse from Iraq's virtually all-male police and other security forces.

Iraqi law protects perpetrators of violence against women: Iraq's penal code considers "honorable motives" to be a mitigating factor in crimes including murder. The code also gives husbands a legal right to discipline their wives. Trafficking in women and girls in and out of the country for sexual exploitation is widespread. There have been no reported convictions for trafficking, and a long-awaited anti-trafficking bill is on hold in the parliament, awaiting revisions.

Outside of Kurdistan, there are no government-run shelters. The many women who have fled sectarian or other violence, who have been widowed, or who for other reasons are heads of households and dependent on state aid are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Religious and government institutions are sometimes complicit in their exploitation - in exchange for charity or benefits, widows have been asked to engage in "pleasure marriages," a previously banned traditional practice that critics say is akin to prostitution.

The women who are coerced into the practice face stigmatization and have no recourse. Human Rights Watch calls on Iraq to immediately suspend and proceed to repeal sections in the penal code that allow mitigation of sentences on grounds of "honor" for violent crimes against women. In the months following the invasion, Iraq experienced a media boom as hundreds of new publications and television and radio channels sprung up across the country, and Iraqis gained access to satellite dishes and the Internet.

But media freedom was short-lived with the introduction of restrictive legislative and other barriers and an upsurge in violence that made Iraq one of the most the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist. While improvements in security since have reduced the murder rate of media workers, journalism remains a hazardous occupation.

Extremists and unknown assailants continue to kill media workers and bomb their bureaus. In addition, journalists now also have to contend with emboldened Iraqi and Kurdish security forces and their respective image-conscious central and regional political leaders. Increasingly, journalists find themselves harassed, intimidated, threatened, arrested, and physically assaulted by security forces attached to government institutions and political parties. Senior politicians are quick to sue journalists and their publications for unflattering articles.

The government should amend vague legislative and regulatory content-based restrictions that curtail the right to freedom of expression, and direct security forces not to harass, abuse, and intimidate journalists. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis hoped that torture as an instrument of state coercion would end. And despite knowing there was a clear risk of torture, US authorities transferred thousands of Iraqi detainees to Iraqi custody, where Iraqi security forces have continued the torture tradition.

Iraqi interrogators routinely abuse detainees, regardless of sect, usually in order to coerce confessions. Interviews with dozens of detainees transferred from a secret detention facility outside Baghdad revealed the significant shortcomings of Iraq's criminal justice system. Interrogators sodomized and whipped detainees, burned them with cigarettes and pulled out their fingernails and teeth. Yet Iraq's prime minister, instead of ordering a public inquiry and prosecuting those responsible for the abuse, dismissed both our findings and those of the Ministry of Human Rights as fictitious, and suspended the government's prison inspection team that initially uncovered the abuse.

The government should launch independent and impartial investigations into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and institute disciplinary measures and criminal prosecution proceedings, as appropriate, against officials at all levels who are responsible for the abuse of detainees.

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The United States and other governments should assist with legal reforms in Iraq by advising how to amend existing laws so that they are consistent with Iraq's obligations under international human rights standards. The international community should press Iraq to promptly investigate all allegations of torture and ill-treatment and criminally prosecute officials who are responsible for the abuse of detainees.

Although the government has passed laws including constitutional safeguards to protect some of these different communities, and in some cases has instituted significant assistance programs, it is still failing some of its most vulnerable citizens, such as internally displaced persons, minorities and persons with disabilities.

Many of the government's assistance or protection programs are non-operational or sub-operational, and insufficient to meet the needs of target populations, despite Iraq's international and domestic commitments.

At a Crossroads

More than 1. Thousands of internally displaced persons now reside in squatter settlements without access to basic necessities such as clean water, electricity and sanitation. An over-stretched Ministry of Displacement has promised aid, but none of the more than a dozen displaced persons we interviewed had received any. Human Rights Watch calls on Iraq's government to develop a coherent national strategy on refugees and internally displaced persons to facilitate their voluntary return, local integration in places of displacement, or relocation to other places in safety and dignity.

Armed groups proclaiming intolerant ideologies have continued their assaults on minority communities, decimating Iraq's indigenous populations, and forcing thousands to flee abroad with no plans to return. The government has failed to stop such attacks targeting minority groups, including Sabian Mandaeans, Chaldo-Assyrians, Yazidis, and Shabaks. To end a climate of impunity, the government must conduct thorough and impartial investigations when attacks occur and bring those responsible to justice. Years of armed conflict have resulted in thousands of war amputees and other persons with disabilities.

Stigmatized, unable to find work, get adequate medical care, or obtain new prostheses and wheelchairs, persons with disabilities in Iraq find themselves relegated to the margins of society.

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The government needs to ensure access to education and employment, strengthen health-care services, and establish rehabilitation and psycho-social support facilities. The report is based on a four-week fact-finding mission in April in which Human Rights Watch visited the cities of Baghdad, Basra, Tikrit, Najaf, Karbala, Amara, and Sulaimaniyya to examine the human rights situation seven years after the US-led invasion. Human Rights Watch interviewed Iraqis, including victims of human rights abuses as well as rights activists, representatives of nongovernmental organizations NGOs , journalists, lawyers, political and religious leaders, and government and security officials about violence against women and minorities, the plight of persons with disabilities and internally displaced persons, freedom of expression, torture, detention conditions, and enforced disappearances.

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We chose these topics in consultation with Iraqi human rights and other NGO activists. We conducted interviews, mainly in Arabic via an Iraqi translator, both privately and in group settings, at the offices of NGOs, homes of victims, community centers, schools, detention and prison facilities, and religious sites. Iraqi NGOs assisted in identifying persons for us to interview.

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In addition, Human Rights Watch interviewed five women in a prison, a detention center and a government-run shelter in Sulaimaniyya and Arbil i n June Human Rights Watch also conducted follow-up telephone interviews and consulted official documents provided by victims and NGOs. We informed all persons interviewed of the purpose of the interview, its voluntary nature, and the ways in which the data would be collected and used.

The names and other identifying information of most of our interlocutors have been withheld in the interests of their personal security. The report also draws on meetings in Baghdad with then-Human Rights Minister Wijdan Michael Salim and other government officials in the Ministries of Human Rights and Defense that focused mainly on trafficking of and violence against women, torture, and government restrictions on media. Most of those meetings occurred during the last week of April after we returned to Baghdad from visiting the other cities.

In November, Human Rights Watch sent a detailed letter with our findings and recommendations to the Prime Minister's Office and requested the government's response see annex. The Prime Minister's Office acknowledged receipt of the letter on November 14, , but as of January 15, , it had not responded to the specific issues raised.

For much of the last century, the rights of Iraqi women and girls have been relatively better protected than in other countries in the region. The Iraqi Provisional Constitution, drafted in , formally guaranteed equal rights to women before the law. The Iraqi government also passed labor and employment laws to ensure that women were granted equal opportunities in the civil service sector, maternity benefits, and freedom from harassment in the workplace.

The government also made modest changes to the personal status law in , giving women extended custody rights in divorce. After the Gulf War, the position of women within Iraqi society rapidly deteriorated as Saddam Hussein embraced Islamic and tribal traditions as a political tool to consolidate his waning power. The government reversed many of the positive steps advancing women's and girls' status in Iraqi society. Compounding the problem, the UN sanctions imposed after the Gulf war had a disproportionate impact on women and girls.

During the sanctions years, the mortality rate for children and pregnant women jumped; between and , the number of women who died during childbirth almost tripled. During this time poorer families were more inclined to send their girls abroad in arranged marriages with few preconditions in the hopes that the girls would lead better lives and send money home.

Women and girls also suffered from increasing restrictions on their freedom of mobility and protections under the law. The insecurity created by the US-led occupation of Iraq, followed by sectarian strife that engulfed the country, further eroded women's rights. In the months following the invasion, Human Rights Watch documented a wave of sexual violence and abductions against women in Baghdad.

Although assailants kidnapped many men as well, the consequences for women and girls were worse due to concerns of family "honor," which is predicated on the moral standing and behavior of female members of the family. For women and girls, the trauma of an abduction continued well after release— the shame associated with the event was a lasting stigma because of the presumption that abductors had raped or sexually assaulted the woman or girl during her ordeal, regardless of whether she was actually raped.

After , militias, insurgents, Iraqi security forces, multinational forces, and foreign private military contractors raped and killed women. In Basra, lawlessness and Iraqi militia activity escalated in September after British forces withdrew their troops from Basra Palace to the airport on the outskirts of the city. Until the Iraqi army's "Charge of the Knights" operation in Basra in March , militias terrorized women in the city. In alone, vigilantes killed women, claiming religious or customary sanction.


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According to Basra security forces, extremists deemed 79 of the victims to be "violating Islamic teachings. They send their vigilantes to roam the city, hunting down those who are deemed to be behaving against their [the extremists'] own interpretations. Abd al-Jalil Khalaf, who was sent to Basra in June as the city's chief of police, told Human Rights Watch that extremists were in complete control of the city.

He said it was impossible for the police force to investigate the crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice since armed groups had infiltrated a large portion of the force and were involved in many of the crimes. Although the worst perpetrators have been transferred or removed from the police force, he said none of the officers implicated in these crimes have been held accountable.

A women's rights activist who led public campaigns against domestic violence and other women's issues in Najaf told Human Rights Watch that she started to receive numerous death threats via text messages in August In September , assailants bombed her house, damaging it and 12 others in the neighborhood, she told us. She continued to receive threats in the weeks following the explosion. She said the police took some photos of the wreckage but did not follow up with a proper investigation, so she tried to pursue the case on her own by hiring a private investigator to determine who was sending her the threatening text messages.

All the police would tell us is 'You're lucky to still be alive. Today, armed groups continue to target female political and community leaders and activists. This threat of violence has had a debilitating impact on the daily lives of women and girls generally and has reduced their participation in public life.