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RIZ KHAN
The fate of Iraqi women
As the world turns its focus away from Iraq, what can be done to help the country's women?
Last Modified: 26 Nov 2009 10:30



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With the invasion of Iraq in 2003 came a US promise of greater opportunity for the women of that country.

Six years later, the reality has proved to be very different. As often happens in conflict zones, women are caught in the middle.

Female lawyers, engineers and doctors who worked freely in Iraq under Saddam Hussein are now afraid to go out.

Rape has become a weapon used to terrorise both sides of Iraq's secular divide and wives and daughters are killed out of revenge.

On Wednesday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the show asks: As the world turns its focus away from Iraq, what can be done to help the country's women?

Joining the show to discuss this is Christina Asquith, a journalist who covered the war in Iraq and recently authored Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq.

Manal Omar, an activist who opposed the invasion of Iraq but went there to work with the country's women, joins us from Baghdad with her perspective.

This episode of the Riz Khan show aired on Wednesday, November 25.
Source:
Al Jazeera
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