Kurdistan Women’s Project Lacks Funding and Strategy, Stakeh

[Aslan]

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Region’s National Strategy Project (NSP), designed to mitigate violence against women and improve their lives, needs both strategy and funds to succeed, women’s organizations say.

“This project is a strategy for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in order to intervene in the life issues of women. We have good laws, but the laws need a good strategy to back them up,” said Pakhshan Zangana, head of the Supreme Council of Women (SCW) which designed the program.

She added that committees established in various provinces to implement project plans were unable to make headway because, “The ministries claim that they do not have enough money to rapidly implement the project plans.”

The KRG adopted a strategy of Fighting Violence Against Women in February last year, aiming to improve women’s issues over a period of seven years.

“This project is just words on paper because the concerned parties have not allocated a budget for its implementation,” said Lanja Abdullah, head of the Warvin Organization for Women’s Affairs.

“The SCW cannot pressure the KRG, and the KRG looks at the project from the perspective of its partisan interests,” Abdullah charged.

She also criticized civil organizations for not caring enough about the activities of the SCW, and vise versa. “Has the SCW exerted enough effort to push for implementing the laws of fighting violence against women?” Abdullah inquired.

She mentioned an SCW survey showing that 68 percent of women do not trust the laws concerning women.

Violence against women, including so-called “honor killings,” is a common problem in the Kurdistan Region. One of the tasks of the NSP has been to come up with laws and facilities to protect women who find themselves cornered by families or society.

“The political parties have their own partisan interest in mind when dealing with the SCW,” Abdullah said. “For example, the Change Movement (Gorran) does not believe in participation in the government, but they have members in the SCW; what does this mean?”

Khanam Rahim, director of the Asuda Organization, said that the SCW needs to pressure the government for the plan to succeed. “I have no hope in seeing the project implemented because the SCW does not have a budget,” she said.