War and the Rights of Children:
America’s Proxy Government Aims to Legalize Pedophilia in Occupied Iraq
By Felicity Arbuthnot
Less than a month before
the eleventh anniversary of the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, the
near destruction of much of the country, heritage, culture, secularism,
education, health services and all State institutions, the country is
poised to revert “two thousand years” say campaigners.
On 25th February Iraq’s Cabinet approved a draft law lowering the age of legal marriage for females to nine years old.
Iraq was, prior to the
invasion, a fiercely secular country, with a broadly equal male, female
workforce and with women benefiting from a National Personal Status Law,
introduced in 1959, which remained “one of the most liberal in the Arab
world, with respect to women’s rights.”
The legal age for marriage
was set at eighteen, forced marriages were banned and polygamy
restricted. Cohesion between communities was enhanced and fostered by:
“eliminating the differential treatment of Sunnis and Shiites under the
law (and erasing differentiation) between the various religious
communities …” Women’s rights in divorce, child custody and inheritance
were an integral part of the Law, with Article 14 stating that all
Iraqis are equal under the law.(1)
Equality was swept away from
the first day of the invasion when George W. Bush and his
Administration started to talk of Sunni, Shiite, Kurds, Christians and
other religions and ethnicities and also effectively selecting the
overseers of the “New Iraq” not by ability but by religion and
ethnicity, effectively pitching Iraqi against Iraqi in what, for all the
complexities had been a very cohesive society. “Divide and rule”
pervaded all.
So far, however, the
Personal Status Law still stands, if largely ignored by the US backed
Parliament and a largely – with honourable and courageous exceptions –
woefully wanting judiciary. The draft law if ratified, as it is aimed to
be after the April elections, would sweep its admirable provisions
aside and turn Iraq in to a pedophiles paradise.
This outrageous plan was
first mooted as early as December 2003, just eight months after the
invasion, by Abdel Aziz al Hakim, who heads the Islamic Supreme Council
of Iraq, who cancelled the Personal Status Law when President of the
Interim Governing Council. Due to opposition by women and others within
the Council and from many civil and women’s organizations, the decision
was revoked by Paul Bremer, arguably the only thing he got right during
his woeful, ill informed tenure. Then, as now, the change: “would have
transferred civil actions concerning family and personal law, including
marriage, divorce, and inheritance, to the jurisdiction of clerics”, not
civil Courts.
Incredibly: “The proposal
has been based on the Shiite Ja’fari school, called after an eighth
century Shiite Imam. A Supreme Shiite Judicial Council in the holy city
of Najaf will supervise nationwide religious tribunals that will settle
family matters …”
Woman’s groups and activists
are vociferous in their outrage and condemnation and in spite of twenty
one of the twenty nine present at the Cabinet decision voting in favour
of the change, some clerics in Najav are distancing themselves from the
proposal, which would also include women not being allowed to leave
their home without the permission of their husband – and ironically a
father’s permission being mandatory for a woman over eighteen to marry.
Muslims will not be allowed to marry non-Muslims.
Hanaa Edwar, who heads the
Al-Amal Association which fights for the socioeconomic improvement of
Iraqis points out that among the poor – which since the invasion has
spiraled, children as young as ten are already marrying and further,
that most of the: religious: “ illiterate people hear it’s based on
Ja’fari (law) and think it must be good.”
Yanar Mohammed, President of
the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq is convinced that: “Iraqi
people will not agree to the legalization of pedophilia … the objections
come from all sides, and the number of women who rais their voices is
high … It is an abuse of children’s rights and their bodily
integrity.”(2)
Edwar and Mohammed are lobbying in and out of the parliament, but “pressure from outside Iraq is essential.”
As Iraq has ratified
Convention on Elimination Against Women (CEDAW) the UN has already asked
for the withdrawal of the draft law. CEDAW “provides that the betrothal
and marriage of a child shall have no legal effect.”
At the Vienna Declaration
and Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights,
held in Vienna from 14th- 25th June 1993, States were: “urged to repeal
existing laws and regulations and to remove customs and practices which
discriminate against and cause harm to the girl child. Article 16(2)
and the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child preclude
States parties from permitting or giving validity to a marriage between
persons who have not attained their majority. In the context of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, ‘a child’ means every human being
below the age of 18 years …”
Human Rights Watch in a less
than robust statement on the marriage of nine year olds, who, in the
West would still in Primary school, a year too young to enter Secondary
education, never the less state: “This draft personal status law
(change) flies in the faces of the Iraqi government’s legal commitments
to protect women’s and girls’ rights … Passage of this law by parliament
may lead to further discriminatory laws.” (3)
Silent is Ann Clwyd, MP.,
formerly Tony Blair’s Human Rights Envoy to Iraq and currently Chair of
the All Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group and of the All Party
Parliamentary Iraq Group, as is.Middle East “Peace Envoy” Tony “I’d do
it again” Blair, as are the US and British Ambassadors in Iraq and the
self appointed “Vicar of Baghdad” Canon Andrew White.
The US and UK could put an
end to this disgrace instantly by simply withdrawing trade, arms sales,
and diplomatic presence. But Iraq is still a destroyed country, courtesy
the same US and UK and there are also all those multi-million
rebuilding, security, and military training contracts. As with the
majority of those in their Iraq puppet Parliament, morality and
integrity are long dead and buried.
Notes
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