By Farhad Chomani
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The number of women widowed in Iraq due to violence and war has risen by a quarter over the past year, now numbering some 2 million, according to an Iraqi official who spoke to Rudaw.
The Iraqi ministry of planning estimated in 2014 that around 1.5 million Iraqi women were widowed over the previous three decades from violence and war.
But an Iraqi MP, who is also a member of the parliament’s family committee, says the number is now closer to 2 million, after nearly a year-long bloody battle with the Islamic State (ISIS).
“The ISIS war has had a devastating impact on women and families who lost their men in the war,” said Rezan Sheikh Dler, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament who has worked on family affairs.
“Our reports suggest that close to another 500,000 women have been added to the total number of widows and with that, among other things, they have also lost the main source of financial support for their children,” she told Rudaw.
The United Nations report indicated in 2006 that nearly 100 women were widowed each day as violence reached its peak.
According to Iraq Body Count, a group that records the casualties of war in the country, nearly 20,000 men were killed every year since the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. It says that over 180,000 people, mostly men, were killed between 2003 and 2013.
But many more wives lost their husbands in the battlefields of the 1980s and ‘90s as Iraq started a series of wars with neighboring countries.
The Iraqi ministry of social affairs pays widows 150,000 Iraqi dinars ($120) per month for financial support.
“We have been unable to support these women and their families properly because of the various economic crises Iraq has faced continually since 2003,” Bayan Nuri, Iraq’s minister of women’s affairs, told Rudaw from Baghdad.
“These women, who often also are mothers, can apply for special government loans that are designed to help them with family businesses or other related projects,” she said.
She added that the Iraqi government has even allocated five percent of its residential projects for families who lost a male member in the war.
Lawmakers in Iraq have suggested economic incentives for men who marry widows. And although polygamy is unlawful, politicians have discussed inducements for married men who would take a second wife.
Nada Ibrahim, a female member of the Iraqi parliament said in 2011 that if a second wife was treated “justly” there would be no grounds for opposing such a law, because of the Iraqi government’s inability to assist widows in raising children
According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), one in 10 households in Iraq is headed by a woman.
The Kurdistan Region’s minister of defense said in January that around 1,000 Peshmarga were killed since the start of the war with ISIS last summer. The majority were family men, according to the ministry.
A report from the Kurdish ministry of social affairs says the number of widows in the Kurdistan Region before the ISIS war in 2014 was around 45,000 women.
