Reuters AlertNet - IRAQ: women alarmed at prospect of rights erosion, UNIFEM says

Reuters AlertNet - IRAQ: women alarmed at prospect of rights erosion, UNIFEM says:

"DUBAI, 24 July (IRIN) - Iraqi women are extremely concerned that the national assembly committee drafting the country's new constitution is curbing women's rights, established under the interim constitution and prior national laws, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reported on Friday.
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The current draft of the constitution 'subordinates guarantees of women's human rights and international law to religious Shari'ah law and replaces one of the Middle East's most progressive personal status laws with arbitrary interpretations of religious law', according to the US-based international women's human rights organisation MADRE.

If the national assembly approves such a constitution, it said, 'it could give self-appointed religious clerics the authority to inflict grave human rights violations on Iraqi women' in relation to freedom of movement, travel, property inheritance and custody of their children. Iraq, which had been overwhelmingly secular until the 1990s, was in danger of being 'catapulted towards theocratic rule', the group warned last week."