Policy paper: Protecting women’s agency in the Middle East: interventions and reforms to ensure women’s rights

Gender-based violence (GBV) against women and girls can take many forms globally, from the absence of personal agency to sexual violence and domestic abuse. To better understand how GBV affects women in the Middle East in particular, this policy brief addresses various instances of GBV against Kurdish and Arab women in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). A particular focus is given to forced/arranged marriages, honour-based violence, and female genital mutilation, which form a ‘patriarchal trifecta’ of oppression: a phenomenon that the author has identified and researched extensively. The policy recommendations informed by this research are relevant to decision-makers in the KRI and other states, among them, Western and European Union countries that have the dealt with troubling cases of violence against women in immigrant communities and face similar challenges to women’s rights. Such violations against women are of particular relevance for the Middle East, or other societies and communities where patriarchal values and norms produce a social milieu where the main justification for violence is the protection of a social construction of honour. In such strongly patriarchal societies, young women and girls merely shift from being the property of their father’s household to being the property of their husband’s family, without acquiring any economic voice, and with no independent agency as an individual. As a result, many women remain shut out from public life and are made to suffer these inflictions in silence.

This policy brief is informed by fieldwork conducted by the author in the KRI, including 55 qualitative interviews with policymakers, United Nations (UN) officials, attorneys, academics, activists, civil society members, plus women and male survivors and perpetrators of GBV. In addition, a quantitative survey was conducted among 200 respondents, both women and men, to gauge opinions on the multi-faceted phenomenon of GBV. The author engaged in a thematic study based on a mixed methods approach, which allowed performing in-depth research and filling a substantial gap in the literature on violence against women. The goal of this policy brief is to give the public institutions responsible for monitoring women’s welfare a better picture of the challenges to equality that women still face and offer ways forward in terms of addressing these challenges.

Policy brief, peer-reviewed