Category: Article

Lifting the ban on women’s shelters in Iraq: promoting change in conflict

There is a crisis-level need for shelter in Iraq, so why does the Iraqi government maintain a policy that stymies critically needed temporary housing and threatens the safety of those willing to provide it? With the ISIS invasion and ensuing crisis displacing over four million people and leaving over eight million in need of humanitarian …

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Iraq’s Female Citizens: Prisoners of War

Iraqi woman human rights defender Yanar Mohammed spoke to Jennifer Allsopp at the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference about grassroots responses to the atrocities women are facing under ISIS. On the second day of the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference on building global support for women human rights defenders, the 100 participants delivered a sobering and urgent …

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Iraqi Activist Describes “Massacres Left and Right” as Civil Society Resists Takeover by ISIS

As Yanar Mohammed, co-founder and the director of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, attends the Women Stop War conference in The Hague, she describes the current situation in Iraq. “The country is under a prevailing culture of militias, which have the upper hand. … They say, ’It’s either us or ISIS.’” Mohammed says …

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Security is not just CCTV: valuing ourselves is security

It feels as if the entire world has been given over to the most perverse notions of ‘safety’  that are really about death and destruction, cruelty and conflict, grandiosity and greed. Marion Bowman reports from the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference in the Netherlands.   It was a classic image of protectiveness. The figure of a …

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Islamic State and the changing rights of Yazidi women

Rachel Browne on the future faced by Yazidi women recently released from Islamic State captivity. After a violent takeover of Yazidi villages in northern Iraq in October 2014, Islamic State proudly declared in its online magazine Dabiq that its fighters had captured and enslaved Yazidis as “spoils of war.” “This large-scale enslavement . . . is probably …

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Under Isis, Iraqi women again face an old nightmare: violence and repression

In a PBS NewsHour video report in June, Isis extremist militants parade through Mosul, Iraq, one of the first cities to fall to their onslaught in early June. The armed men are hanging off the back of trucks, as the crowd films them. One fighter leans out a car window, wagging his finger. The footage …

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What will it take to stop Isis using rape as a weapon of war?

Noor (not her real name), a 14-year-old girl from a small village in northern Iraq, was sold 15 times, passed from one Islamic State (Isis) fighter to the next. Each time, she was raped. Noor managed to escape and made her way, mostly on foot, to a refugee camp. There, she met Yanar Mohammed, an …

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World Woman Festival 2015: Women in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan ‘worst hit’ by fundamentalism

Women are the greatest victims of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and the extent of the violence being inflicted upon them can no longer be ignored, an international panel of human rights campaigners has said. In a debate about jihadis, campaigners at the World Woman Festival in Oslo said that in countries such as Iraq, …

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We all know about jihadists, but what about those waging an ‘anti-jihad’?

As the UN Security Council tackles the entity claiming to be “Islamic State,” and President Barack Obama invokes global Muslim responsibility, many ask whether people of Muslim heritage do enough to counter extremism. The fact is, away from the media spotlight, thousands wage daily battles in their own countries against what President Obama called a …

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International Campaign Warns: No Women, No Peace in Iraq

(Ottawa—October 27, 2014). As world powers deploy military missions to fight ISIL*, the International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict is urging them to prioritize ending widespread sexual violence by ISIL and other militant groups in Iraq. The Campaign also warns that without the inclusion of Iraqi women in diplomatic efforts to …

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Houzan Mahmoud: Political parties need to draw women into their ranks to make themselves “credible”.

Hazhar Osman: What is your opinion on Islamic State jihadists?             Houzan Mahmoud: I would rather call them ISIS terrorists, since in my opinion Islamist jihad has always been about terror and terrorism. We can no longer separate the two terms, jihad and terrorism. Terror against defenceless civilians and massacres of non-Muslims – even Muslims …

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OWFI Statement

Organisation of Women’s Freedom Iraq-OWFI   (27/08/2014) Statement of solidarity with the Yazidi community and condemnation of ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s minority groups by ISIS.

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Who will condemn the sexual enslavement of Iraq’s minority women?

Slavery and rape are being used as weapons of war by Isis against Yazidi and Christian women, yet rights activists are silent Evidence that women belonging to the Yazidi and Christian religious minorities in Iraq are being raped and sold into slavery by the Islamic State (Isis) is mounting. One of the first to speak …

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AskYanar: Your Chance to Connect with an Iraqi Women’s Rights Activist

Since the beginning of the crisis in Iraq, our partner Yanar Mohammed, President of Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), has provided us with on-the-ground accounts of the hardships and danger Iraqi women and families are facing. Now, we want to give you the opportunity to pose your questions to her.

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