New family law on hold

Women's groups in Iraq have cautiously welcomed a decision by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) to shelve a proposal for a new family law, which would have discriminated against women, critics say. The decision to implement the law has been put on hold after widespread dissatisfaction expressed by women's rights activists. The proposal for the 'Personal Status Law' as it's known was for marriage, divorce, custody and child support, inheritance and all other aspects of family law to be dealt with by Shari'at courts under Islamic law. But chairman of the IGC, Adnan al-Pachachi, has confirmed that the decision under Act 137 was on hold at least temporarily. “The original law cannot be annulled by a decision. It can only be annulled by another law. So the Personal Status Law of 1959 will not be annulled unless with another law, which is unlikely to happen in the near future,” he told reporters. Nidal Abed, an activist and a member in the Iraqi Women's Link group, the oldest feminist organisation in the country formed in 1952, told IRIN that although Act 137 was put on hold, it could be implemented later. She emphasised the importance of keeping the law in place. “This current personal status law was issued in 1959 under the president Abdel Karin Qasim. The law stemmed from Islamic Shari’at, its items were collected from Sunni and Shiite jurisprudence,” she said. Earlier in January, Iraqi women’s rights activists held a conference at the Al-Sayd Club in Baghdad in response to the 29 December 2003 decision by the IGC to pass a bill cancelling what is known as the “Personal Status Law,” a set of rules that had long provided opportunities for and protected the rights of women in Iraq. The Iraqi Women's Link was one of the major protestors who demonstrated three times against the law along with other women's group from different ethnic backgrounds. Around 5,000 Kurdish women had also marched in the northeastern Iraq town of Sulaymaniyah in protest at the recent IGC decision, while in the Shi’ite town of Najaf, some 500 women demonstrated in support of the decision. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)in Iraq has stated that it will not endorse the decision by the IGC because it would deprive women of their rights. CPA head Paul Bremer must sign off on all such decisions in order for them to take effect.