Focus on widows

Batton Gasem sits weeping alone on a patch of dusty waste ground near her apartment, in the Shia majority town of Al-Sadr, northeast of Baghdad, oblivious to the searing heat. Her husband attended a clandestine Shia pilgrimage to visit a holy site in 1998. For this, he was imprisoned for eight months before being executed. Other widows envy her, though; she found her husband's remains a month ago at Al-Mahawaeel, one of the many mass graves discovered recently outside Baghdad. Widows are everywhere in Al-Sadr, local people say. At 28 years old, Samira Kharbat doesn't look her age. Like many other young Shia women, she is dressed head-to-toe in a black gown, partly for religious reasons, but also because she's still in mourning for her husband. "On 26 September 2000, some gunmen came and took my husband to the prison because he belongs to Da'wa [Shia opposition] party. I found out a month later he had died under torture, then they demanded 37,000 dinars (US $26) for the body on the understanding there would be no funeral," she told IRIN. Since then, Samira has raised her four children alone with the help of her husband's family and her brother-in-law. Like many women from Shia families who lost their husbands during Saddam's regime, Samira receives no state pension. Batton and her two children live with her husband's family. She makes a living by making the traditional black gown women wear in the area. "You can't guarantee a number of gowns you need for your living, I take all offers and they help me to get by," she told IRIN. Estimates of the number of widows in Iraq vary. "Due to wars, internal oppression by Saddam and the poor economic situation in Iraq, approximately two million people have died, leaving 250,000 widows. These women are left on their own with their children with no means of attaining financial aid or assistance for food clothing or shelter," a spokesperson for the UK charity Human Relief Foundation told IRIN. Wigdan Al-Khuzai, who manages the New Iraq Association for Social Services, established on 10 April - immediately after the fall of the old regime - told IRIN that women in Iraq's skewed demographics now account for almost 60 percent of the population, and a high proportion head households alone. Although some of those who lost husbands in battle received small government pensions, many have been left on their own with their children, with no means of attaining financial aid or assistance for food, clothing or shelter. "Many men died while they were involved in different consecutive wars, for example thousands of men who were born in 1968 were taken for three months training in the army and died in the Iran-Iraq war, which left behind many unmarried women and many widows as well," she said. Although a peaceful post-Saddam Iraq, where human rights are respected, should reduce the number of widows over time, conditions for women in general, and widows and female-headed households in particular, have deteriorated since the recent conflict, according to a 17-page Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released on Wednesday. Entitled "Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad", the document concludes that the failure of Iraqi and US-led coalition authorities to provide public security in Iraq's capital lies at the root of a widespread fear of rape and abduction among women and their families. "Women and girls today in Baghdad are scared, and many are not going to schools or jobs or looking for work," said Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of HRW. "If Iraqi women are to participate in postwar society, their physical security needs to be an urgent priority." Al-Khuzai plans to start an organisation to help women who suffered psychologically, socially and economically from Iraq's violent past. Her husband was due to be executed for political reasons in 1999, but managed to bribe guards and flee to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. "We only started work since 10 April and hope to work with the UNDP [United Nations Development Programme], particularly with Kurdish women in the north who have suffered a lot from wars," she said. Since Kurdish cities obtained self-rule from 1991, Kurdish women managed to set up many organisations to help women find jobs and learn skills such as sewing, handcrafts and carpets, she added. A recent UNDP-commissioned study on widows in Baghdad found that in one small district of Al-Sadr city, known as Hai'our, almost every house containing at least two families had a widow. "We are hoping we can start working with the UNDP or any other organisation to help these women get jobs in different places or any job where they can start to have their voices heard," Al-Khuzai said.