Fighting for women’s rights
Hersh Tahir is speaking about the women who have been abducted and abused by IS but who have managed to escape.
Tahir is one of those people the West is not used to hearing about: A man working against the odds to help abused women in Iraq and in his own Kurdish region in particular.
An engineer by training, he found himself working with a UN-supported NGO following the Gulf War when his country was on its knees.
The group, Asuda — Combating Violence Against Women, is coping not just with the fallout following the US war but also with war in Syria and the rise of IS. The 5m population in Kurdistan has been overrun with 2m refugees and displaced people.
But IS is one of the biggest challenges, he says. From the end of last year, Asuda has seen Yazidi people who have been terribly traumatised, especially the women who had been abducted by IS and used as sex slaves.
“They were abused in the worst possible way. They come back from Desh and have nowhere to go because their area is still under ISIS control, their families are kidnapped and killed, and they are in a really difficult situation,” Tahir says.
The Yazidi people are not Islamic. They have their own ancient religion, and while they are ethnically Kurdish, they have their own separate identity. They have been persecuted through the centuries and are now spread across Europe, with their numbers decreasing rapidly.
“They have been physically and sexually abused, used as servants in the houses of the militants, sold and exchanged. It is devastating, especially in those kinds of communities where, when a woman is raped she cannot talk about it and the man does and describes it as something good,” Tahir says.
The success of IS has made people pessimistic about the fight for women’s rights. “Saddam was perceived by everyone as the worst but this is of a different dimension — it is so bad everyone agrees that this is the worst. They are expanding and getting stronger because nobody is serious about defeating them. Someone wants them there,” Tahir says, stressing that this is his personal view.
He observes that violence against women is part of the violent nature of the people in the region. “Our people tend to resort to violence and the same when dealing with sisters and wives,” he says.
Education is key and Tahir says abused women are in educated families, including his own. The work of Asuda opened his eyes to the reality for many of the women in his community and he moved from being a technical adviser with the NGO to helping the victims. Some of its current projects are funded by Ireland through Christian Aid Ireland, and he spoke to the Irish Examiner when he was in Brussels for an EU announcement of an extra €25m for victims of the worsening humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Some 8m people need help, but half of the aid operation is in peril because of a lack of funds, the UN warns. Frontline health clinics have been forced to close and food rations for over 1m people have been cut.
Operating an NGO has never been easy in that part of the world, especially one working on women’s rights. Asuda was set up by a group of activists, supported by international donors and with help at one point from the local government authorities. It concentrated on raising awareness among women and in the community. Much of its time is spent dealing with problems that should be addressed by government, such as so-called honour killings by a woman’s family, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, harassment, and abuse.
Asuda offers physical protection, psychological and social counselling, and legal assistance to victims
One of the main issues Tahir wants to emphasise is the discrepancy between some of the laws that have been put in place to favour women’s rights, but that are not being implemented. “Part of the problem is because women or those concerned are not reporting, not asking for their rights, or afraid. Because the protection mechanism is not ideal, even if a perpetrator is punished there may be some reactions. It’s not like law enforcement in any other country, because they are new laws that in most cases are controversial; implementing causes a lot of problems. They are afraid, and unaware — or they fear reaction,” he says.
However, it is changing, slowly, he believes.
Fifteen years ago, nobody would have talked about women’s right and nobody would even have known what female genital mutilation was. The state has taken over providing safe houses for abused women and has established special departments within the police to deal with gender violence and to whom women can report.
The government is also trying to increase the number of women in politics. Parties are co-opting women even if they do not have the votes.
Fifteen years ago it was considered shameful and inappropriate for a woman to work for a woman’s aid organisation because they were perceived as trying to change values and culture, but that too is changing. However, the pressure is increasing as the march of IS puts all women in peril.
