Iraq has been pitched into a new civil war. After a lightning-quick advance, an extremist Sunni group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now controls much of northern and western Iraq.
ISIS immediately moved to impose its fundamentalist agenda directly on the bodies of women. Even as its jeeps were still rolling into Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, ISIS fighters were ordering women to cover themselves fully and stay at home where they belong. Within days, credible reports began emerging of ISIS fighters abducting and raping women in the territories they control.
The Iraqi government’s response to the incursion has been to ratchet up sectarian tensions throughout the country, resurrecting Shiite militias that have their own record of atrocities.
As over one million men have been called up to fight, women have become the heads of hundreds of thousands of households. Women and the children in their care are also the majority of the 500,000 people who have fled their homes in fear of ISIS and the threat of airstrikes.
ISIS has set Baghdad in its sights, and the city of seven million is on high alert. Neighborhoods are overrun with militias, and people are afraid to leave their homes, even to buy food. And those who have stood up against sectarianism before -- women’s rights and peace activists like our partners -- are in grave danger.
We invite you to read the full article published June 30th 2014
Iraq has been pitched into a new civil war. After a lightning-quick advance, an extremist Sunni group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now controls much of northern and western Iraq.
ISIS immediately moved to impose its fundamentalist agenda directly on the bodies of women. Even as its jeeps were still rolling into Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, ISIS fighters were ordering women to cover themselves fully and stay at home where they belong. Within days, credible reports began emerging of ISIS fighters abducting and raping women in the territories they control.
The Iraqi government’s response to the incursion has been to ratchet up sectarian tensions throughout the country, resurrecting Shiite militias that have their own record of atrocities.
As over one million men have been called up to fight, women have become the heads of hundreds of thousands of households. Women and the children in their care are also the majority of the 500,000 people who have fled their homes in fear of ISIS and the threat of airstrikes.
ISIS has set Baghdad in its sights, and the city of seven million is on high alert. Neighborhoods are overrun with militias, and people are afraid to leave their homes, even to buy food. And those who have stood up against sectarianism before -- women’s rights and peace activists like our partners -- are in grave danger.
We invite you to read the full article published June 30th 2014