Baghdad, march 07: Baghdad After decades of war, there are more than 1 million widows and more than 5 million children with no fathers in Iraq,” Zahra al-Jabouri said, when asked why she is running in Iraqs parliamentary election which takes place Sunday.
This bitter reality for women and children requires revolutionary reform efforts from the government and civil society – to rebuild this segment of society, with a modern vision that takes into consideration the terrible circumstances they have suffered,” al- Jabouri told the German Press Agency dpa.
All attempts to better the lives of women and children over the last years remain very far from achieving their goals,” she said. Women have not received sufficient attention to solve their economic and education problems.”
Al-Jabouri is one of hundreds of women competing for 78 seats constitutionally reserved for them.
The streets of Baghdad are covered with thousands of posters of female candidates. Some hope to benefit from the larger political parties media machines to make television and radio appearances. Others are going door-to-door to push their programmes.
The suffering of women and children has gotten worse these past years,” al-Jabbouri said. They have been suffering since the 1980s and the Iraq-Iran war, during and after which women bore many burdens and became responsible for raising the children alone in the absence of the father.”
But while the problems women face would be central to her work as a parliamentarian, should she be elected, al-Jabbouri said she is not running on womens issues alone.
It seems to me that the time has come for change in the Iraqi parliament,” she told dpa. We need to get rid of the old faces and bring in new faces that represent the current reality. We need to fix the mistakes of the old lawmakers who were not up to the task.”
The use of the open list in the upcoming elections willput women on the line, despite the constitution guarantees that women should make up 25 per-cent of the parliament. This requires the arrival of qualified new women in parliament,” said Asmaa Moussa, a member of Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadrs movement.
Recent changes to Iraqs law covering elections mean that voters can see which candidates a party is running, rather than simply casting a ballot for a party and leaving the party to choose its candidates.
Fortunately, Moussa said, Most of the female nominees are efficient and capable of leading efforts to improve women’s situation, picking them up, rebuilding institutions, and creating a new reality based on a new perspective reflecting the importance of women in Islam.”
The coming stage requires a new Iraqi parliament – in every way – in order to avoid mistakes,” she told dpa.
But while women have played a significant role in Iraqi politics since the fall of Saddam Husseins government in 2003, serving as ministers, lawmakers, and high-ranking officials, some Iraqi women said their presence in institutions is not enough.
The role of women in the (last) Iraqi parliament was marginal,” Nidal Nasser Diwan, a professor at Baghdad Universitys Faculty of Arts, told dpa. We have not seen any impact from them on this institution.”
We need a real push from the electorate to look at the nominees’ programs, especially regarding combating the brain-drain from Iraq and improving Iraqi universities, developing scientific research and paying attention to the arts,” she said.
–Agencies