Reports Boost Poor Iraqi Women

IWPR Iraq’s stories on impoverished women in Anbar have prompted provincial officials to step up efforts to help them.

The provincial council has launched a women’s committee that will meet weekly with female Anbar residents, and has already provided jobs, free healthcare, financial aid and legal support for two widows featured in IWPR’s reports.

Rabiyaa Nael, a provincial council member who serves on the committee, said IWPR’s reports on widows in Anbar had pushed the council to address the needs of women. The council had created a women’s committee but it did not meet until March, after the Anbar provincial council office passed along IWPR’s reports to council members.

The committee is tasked with providing support for women and, Nael said, that after reading IWPR’s reports, the provincial council decided to formally launch it to “solve and understand women’s issues in the province”.

"We had a committee to address women’s issues, but it was not activated until the Anbar provincial council’s media office sent us a copy of IWPR’s reports,” she said.

Sabah Al-Ani, general director of Anbar’s psychological health department, said the IWPR stories broke new ground, as this was the “first time that women’s issues in Anbar have been tackled in such depth.

Experts interviewed for IWPR Iraq’s report Impoverished Women Vulnerable to Extremists warned that war-ravaged Anbar’s destitute women – many of them widows – could fall prey to promises of money, revenge and martyrdom from extremists intent on destabilising Iraq.

Insurgent groups have used Iraqi women as suicide bombers to attack public institutions, markets and security checkpoints.

The report followed another IWPR story Widows Silent Victims of Ramadi Attacks which featured female victims of a devastating truck bombing in Anbar. Dozens of poor widows and mothers were queuing to receive their benefits when the suicide bomber struck.

Thirty-year-old Anbar resident Halema Hashem, a widowed mother of four, was among the victims interviewed for the IWPR piece. Provincial council committee members contacted her as well as another widow featured by IWPR, Elaf Muhammed, after reading the stories.

Muhammed secured a job, legal aid and healthcare through the provincial council after meeting with Nael in late March. Nael, who gave her 300 US dollars, also quickly arranged a job interview for her at a sewing factory, where she recently began working.

Muhammed, 31, says the job will allow her to keep her three children. Her late husband’s family threatened to take custody of the children in part because she could not support them. The provincial council also promised to provide Muhammed with free legal aid if she faces a custody battle.

She said she was grateful to IWPR for writing about her life as a widow and said her life had “changed for the better”.

Meeting with Nael “is a big change”, she said. “Being heard is more important than money.”

The provincial council also sent a case worker from Anbar’s social welfare department to visit Hashem and raised her monthly government benefit from 100,000 to 175,000 dinars (85 to 145 dollars). They also provided Hashem, who is still suffering from injuries sustained in the bombing, with free medicine.

“We are quite serious about stopping the bad guys from manipulating women’s suffering," Nael said.

Sabah Al-Ani, general director of Anbar’s psychological health department, said the IWPR stories broke new ground, as this was the “first time that women’s issues in Anbar have been tackled in such depth.

“Journalists in Anbar don’t pay attention to women’s issues and their rights because they are part of a society that believes that women were created only to serve men and do housework.”

The stories, he went on, focused “on their personal situation and gave them the chance to speak for themselves, instead of their parents, brothers, or uncles [speaking for them]. It is unusual to have private conversation and talk freely with [women in Anbar]”.

Ani said the report inspired him to “urge journalists and media activists to act more bravely by covering [women’s] issues in the media, with the hope of prompting change”.

Firas Sami, a parliamentary candidate for with Iraqiya coalition in Anbar, said the IWPR stories gave weight to an Iraqiya report addressing widows’ issues which was submitted to parliament earlier this year. “The stories reflect reality by portraying the women as real, hopeless victims,” he said.

In another development, an Iraqi news photographer covering a tense demonstration said he was able to assist an injured colleague thanks to skills he acquired at an IWPR hostile environment training course.

Issa Kadhum al-Atwani, a photographer with Al-Sumariya, a leading Iraqi news website, said he was on assignment at political rally in Babil ahead of parliamentary elections in March.

Atwani said he was with a reporter at the demonstration when the crowd became unruly and they ran for safety. As they did so, Atwani’s colleague sliced his leg on barbed wire.

Recalling the first aid lessons he was taught at the IWPR course, Atwani tied a shirt around the reporter’s leg, reducing the bleeding until he got him to hospital, where the wound was stitched up. “I wouldn’t have been able to help my friend without the instruction I received at the course,” he said.

IWPR Iraq has trained 195 Iraqi journalists, including 81 women, in critical safety awareness and first aid skills since October 2008.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 141 journalists have been killed in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s regime was deposed in 2003. The country is one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the world.

Recalling the first aid lessons he was taught at the IWPR course, Atwani tied a shirt around the reporter’s leg, reducing the bleeding until he got him to hospital, where the wound was stitched up. “I wouldn’t have been able to help my friend without the instruction I received at the course,”
Issa Kadhum al-Atwani, a photographer with Al-Sumariya

During the five-day course in IWPR’s training centre in Erbil, journalists are taught skills such as risk assessment, safety and travel planning, hostage prevention and conflict and anger management.

The training also raises students’ awareness about weapons and unexploded ordnance.

"The course was extremely beneficial for all participants,” said Ahmed Noori, head of the Najaf provincial council’s press office, a recent attendee. “We really need this information as we face new challenges each and every day."

The course was designed by IWPR Iraq’s head of security, Richard Mackenzie, and is taught by chief hostile environment trainer and IWPR Iraq security officer Ismail Abdul-Aziz.

While many Iraqi journalists are accustomed to war, Mackenzie said they often aren’t equipped with skills to operate safely in the field and lack medical training.

First aid skills and lectures by Iraqi doctors are integral to the course. Students are taught how to keep a colleague alive who has been injured in a shooting, a bomb blast, a car crash and other potentially-fatal incidents.

“It is a known fact that after a bomb blast many people who are still alive die in the minutes after the explosion, before the medical services can get to them,” Mackenzie said. “This newly acquired medical knowledge can be a life saver.”

After attending the IWPR course, an Iraqi journalist “has more confidence than before when out and about in dangerous situations”, he said.

Noor Hussein, a news reporter in Basra, said the course enabled her to assess potentially dangerous situations immediately after taking the course.

While waiting for a taxi in Baghdad on her way home from IWPR in Erbil, she noticed that one of the passengers was carrying a loaded weapon.

“He claimed that his gun was licensed and threw carelessly inside the car. Something in the back of my mind told me that something bad would happen if I didn’t urge that man to make sure his gun was locked, and that’s what I did,” Hussein said.

"I realised then that I had become more aware of danger and could predict it by using my instincts.”

Seham al-Mukhtar, a Babil-based journalist, said she learned that journalists should “act as chameleons” by not standing out when they cover stories.

“Journalists should always adapt to their environments so that they can emerge unscathed and with a good story when they report,” she said.