Eight Years of Abuses and Impunity

'The Iraqi government is a party to a number of international treaties that clearly define the role of governments in preventing human rights abuses, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention Against Torture. However, the report found that it has often failed to enact and enforce commensurate legal and penal codes.

A large portion of the HRW report focuses on the rights of women and girls. “The biggest victims in Iraq,” says one female rights activist interviewed in Baghdad in 2010, “are young women.”

Before the 1991 Gulf War, the rights of women in Iraq were “relatively better protected than other countries in the region,” thanks to a series of legal reforms promulgated by the Ba’ath Party, “specifically aimed at improving the status of women in both the public and private spheres,” the report states.'  Human Rights Watch Report Here.