It's a well-known fact that the percentage of women in the Iraqi parliament came about as a result of a quota, which was the result of Iraqi women's organizations demanding it from the authorities at the time.
We do have 25% of the parliament as women, but you may also have noticed the term “meaningful representation of women” being repeated many times. Most of those parliamentarians belong to religious, patriarchal parties where their role has been drawn for them, and their loyalty is more to their political parties than to their gender. It is not meaningful participation in bettering the situation of women in Iraq.
In response to the question about the role of women in the reconciliation efforts in the country, women are not being included at all. Even civil society voices are being silenced.
I wrote in the speaking notes that one of the initiatives that was silenced was the radio for women, the only radio station for women, which we had started in Iraq. Because we had campaigned against a very misogynous law called the Jaafari law, the government gave us an order to close it under many pretexts.
The meaningful voices of women are being silenced. Their meaningful representation in the councils and committees is not desired by the government. The government itself is in a state of flux at this point, because the prime minister is in a difficult situation, although unfortunately it's not moving towards a change for the people or towards an egalitarian situation. It's just religious parties doing a reshuffle inside the government to give more seats to this group and not that group.
According to the way the government is run, the chances that are given to women do not look very good. Unless civil society is empowered and given a role with the encouragement of the international community, and with some support from the Canadian government, we will not see better times in Iraq.
Between ISIS-controlled zones and the Iraqi government, women are paying the price in all of that conflict. Although the men do get killed—and these are massacres being committed—women are enduring long-term sexual victimization that neither the government nor the international community is addressing in an adequate way.
The only response is to lend support for the military conquest in Iraq while nobody asks about the victims. We know that, because we have the only shelters in Iraq proper for women. We have opened some for Yazidi women, and some in the western part of Iraq, but the international community is more concerned about military support for the Iraqi government's army.
I come from civil society. I'm a Canadian Iraqi woman and that's why my vision might be a bit critical, but we believe that the change can come from there. It has to be a bottom-up change, because all the millions of dollars—and now the number is half a trillion—spent on the Iraqi government did not bring us anything.