by Taif Alkhudary
![](https://blogsmedia.lse.ac.uk/blogs.dir/22/files/2023/09/tahrir-graffiti-iraq-1.jpg)
In early August, the Iraqi Communications and Media Fee issued a directive banning using the time period ‘gender’ in all public communications. It additionally really useful the alternative of the phrase ‘homosexuality’ with ‘sexual deviance’.
The choice got here on the again of an organised disinformation marketing campaign in Iraqi media shops largely owned or managed by the dominant post-2003 political events. The marketing campaign linked using the time period ‘gender’ in Iraq with the ‘proliferation’ of homosexuality, the ‘promotion’ of transgender identities, ‘ethical decay’ and the violation of non secular and nationwide values.
The ban has already had detrimental penalties on the work of teachers in universities and workers at humanitarian organisations. Some professors educating gender research have needed to droop their programs, whereas NGO staff engaged in ‘gender programming’ inside the growth sector have been warned to keep away from utilizing the time period of their work.
Furthermore, it has led to a proposal inside parliament to amend the anti-prostitution legislation to incorporate a piece criminalising homosexuality with penalties together with loss of life.
The backlash towards using the time period ‘gender’ and the deliberate distortion of its which means will not be distinctive to Iraq. Conservative actors from the world over have attacked the phrase as a part of a pushback towards gender equality beneficial properties.
However in Iraq, the ‘anti-gender’ marketing campaign additionally displays rising efforts by mainstream events to shrink Iraq’s civic area in an try and reverse their very own declining reputation. Lately, they’ve instrumentalised broad and obscure legal guidelines to focus on anybody – from activists to apolitical social media influencers – deemed to have violated ‘public morals’.
This comes at a time when girls legislators maintain virtually 30 % of parliamentary seats for the primary time because the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. However whereas holding a place of energy, these girls have been largely silent and even inspired a few of these insurance policies.
Even girls legislators, members of the Parliamentary Committee on Girls, Youngsters and Household, haven’t spoken up, together with when the Communications and Media Fee issued its ban on ‘gender’.
Maybe their silence is unsurprising on condition that those that have tried to counter the disinformation circulating concerning the which means of the time period have been viciously attacked within the media. For instance, main Iraqi feminist activist Hanaa Edwar has been subjected to insults and misogynistic slurs; she has been known as the ‘mom of homosexuality’ in Iraq and labelled a overseas agent who ‘set the groundwork for planting homosexuality and ethical depravity’ within the nation.
The previous two years have additionally seen a string of much-publicised killings of girls, which have reignited the general public debate concerning the pressing want for a home violence legislation. Since 2015, drafts of such laws have been vehemently opposed in parliament on the grounds that it might violate Islam, go towards ‘nationwide values’ and can be ‘incompatible with Iraqi tradition’.
Factions related to the present governing alliance – the Shia Coordination Framework – together with the Advantage Occasion, State of Regulation Coalition and the Fatah Alliance – have been essentially the most vocal in these debates.
Prior to now, some girls lawmakers have tried to push for the laws, however at the price of threats and intimidation. In 2019, when Haifa Al-Amin, a member of parliament from the Iraqi Communist Occasion (ICP), known as for the adoption of the home violence legislation, she confronted an indignant mob of Advantage Occasion supporters, calling for her execution and for the burning of the ICP’s headquarters.
Within the present parliament, only some girls legislators have tried to push for the legislation to be voted on and have to this point did not put it on the agenda.
Whereas gender considerations everybody and the onus to advertise and shield human rights shouldn’t be put solely on the backs of girls, this however begs the query: why regardless of their substantial presence in parliament, have girls member of parliament not mounted a concerted effort to assist shield girls towards home violence and oppose the backlash towards ‘gender’?
One reply is that Iraq’s mainstream political events are gatekeepers in the case of the candidates chosen to run for election. That’s the reason, solely these girls who’ve pre-existing connections to native and nationwide elites and are more likely to toe the occasion line are nominated within the first place.
As a result of low standing afforded to girls inside society and inflexible expectations about how girls ought to behave, it’s typically extra harmful for them to go towards the agendas of those that helped them achieve energy than it’s for males within the place, with transgressions on their half more likely to be punished extra severely.
Due to the dominance of the institution political events in parliamentary politics, only a few of the ladies in parliament are impartial or from opposition events – and thus extra more likely to problem regressive insurance policies.
Within the 2021 elections, solely 16.4 % of the 946 girls who ran for election didn’t have a celebration affiliation. Of those that received seats, 5 have been impartial and an additional seven have been from reformist events equivalent to Imtidad, New Era and Isharaqat Kanoon.
Moreover, the grip on Iraqi politics the mainstream events have been in a position to keep, regardless of being more and more unpopular, has additionally helped undermine any efforts to convey reformist and impartial forces collectively.
After the exit of the Sadrist bloc in 2022 and the redistribution of its seats to the remaining forces in parliament, the proportion of impartial legislators and people who are members of other events rose to 26 %. However the disunity on this group has made it not possible to push for extra progressive laws.
It has additionally allowed mainstream events to usher in a collection of socially conservative measures in a determined try and win extra reputation amongst conservative components in society and keep their grip on energy.
These efforts have solely intensified as Iraq has drawn nearer to the provincial elections scheduled to happen on the finish of the 12 months.
To problem the backsliding on girls’s rights in Iraq, and human rights extra broadly, Iraqi girls – and males – want extra various routes into politics that don’t contain the networks of the dominant post-2003 events. And people would open up provided that the mainstream events’ grip on energy is loosened from beneath.
This piece was first printed by Al Jazeera underneath the title: ‘As Iraq backslides on gender equality, the place are its girls Mps?‘. Additionally it is a part of the analysis venture ‘Gendered Networks of Energy: The parliamentary quota and ladies’s substantive political illustration in Iraq‘, funded by a grant from the British Institute for the Research of Iraq.
The contents inside the article have been provided by way of Newswire for Finencial.com, go to