UNHCR's ELIGIBILITY GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSING THE ...

to preserve the family’s “honour”. Given the fact that “honour killings” are prohibited by
law, they may be concealed as accidents, suicides or suicide attempts, and, reportedly, most
cases are investigated as such. According to the KRG Human Rights Ministry, 239 women
burned themselves between January and August 2006 alone. The authorities in the
Governorate of Sulaymaniyah recorded 37 traumatic burn cases in November 2006
involving women, but it is feared that the actual number might be much higher as many
cases are not reported. 666 Ashraf Qazi, the Special Representative of the Secretary General
for Iraq, in a letter dated 24 August 2006 to the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the
President of the KRG, Massoud Barzani, expressed his concern about the practices related
to “honour crimes”. 667
A survey undertaken by the German NGO WADI 668 in the Garmyan district of the
Governorate of Sulaymaniyah revealed that between 60 and 70 percent of the 1,500 women
interviewed in 40 villages had suffered from female genital mutilation (FGM). Some local
women’s organizations have been campaigning against the practice for many years. Since
2001, they have received important support from clerics issuing fatwas against the practice
and local TV stations covering the issue. As part of its campaign against FGM, WADI
organized a conference in Erbil on 26 September 2006 that was supported by local
authorities, who had previously denied that FGM was practiced in the region. A first step in
prosecuting the practice is that midwives found to engage in FGM lose their licence.
However, midwives are not the only ones involved in FGM. WADI reports that FGM is
practiced by Muslims, Christians and Kaka’i. 669 According to Amnesty International (AI),
there are indications that the practice is decreasing. 670
Further, women and girls in Iraq may be exposed to other harmful traditional practices such
as forced and/or early marriage (including exchanging of women between families for
marriage purposes and marriages between young women and much older men). The right of
men and women to enter into marriage only if they freely and fully consent is not enshrined
in the Constitution. It does provide, however, that the State must protect childhood and
prohibits all forms of violence and abuse in the family. 671 In addition, Iraq is party to the
666
UNAMI HRO, December 2006 Human Rights Report, p. 11, see above footnote 10.
667
Ibidem, October 2006 Human Rights Report, p. 11-12, see above footnote 66.
668
WADI is a German-Iraqi NGO, founded in Germany in 1991, which began its activities in Northern Iraq
in 1993. WADI’s projects in Iraq mainly focus on empowering women and assisting women in distress, but
also includes support to marginalized groups, such as prisoners and IDPs; see WADI, A brief overview of
Wadi’s activities 1993-2006, http://www.wadinet.de/projekte/frauen/khanzad/women-brief.htm.
669
Sandra Strobel and Thomas v. der Osten-Sacken, “Female Genital Mutilation
in Iraqi Kurdistan”, Presentation to the conference: 1ère Journée Humanitaire sur la Santé des Femmes dans
le Monde organized by Gynécologie sans Frontières, WADI, 8 May 2006, http://www.wadinet.de/news/
dokus/fgm-conference_1ere_journee_humanitaire-en.htm. See also: WADI, A brief overview of Wadi’s
activities 1993-2006, http://www.wadinet.de/projekte/frauen/khanzad/women-brief.htm; RFE/RL, Iraq: Study
Says Female Genital Mutilation Widespread In North, 21 January 2005, http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/
2005/01/5c740d58-641a-4f32-b375-5c731a811634.html; Nicholas Birch, Genital Mutilation is Traditional in
Iraq’s Kurdistan, Women’s E-News, 1 August 2004, http://www.wadinet.de/projekte/frauen/fgm/attach4.htm;
IWPR, Female circumcision wrecking lives, Iraqi Crisis Report No. 120, 13 April 2005,
http://www.kwahk.org/articles.asp?id=68.
670
AI, Iraq – Decades of Suffering, February 2005, p. 20, http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/MDE14001
2005ENGLISH/$File/MDE1400105.pdf.
671
Article 29(1)(B) and Article 29(4).
124