Thank you. That's a very good question.
In the constitution, article 41 is one that formally addresses freedoms. It says that all Iraqis are free to choose their matrimonial law, under which women are married or divorced, and under which all family issues are to be taken up. But it is a very tricky article, because it has allowed the Islamic court and Islamic judiciary to override our previous law, which was called the personal status law.
The current constitution is flawed in many ways, but in this article it has given the upper hand to the extremists to abort all our previous achievements in Iraq, which decades of struggle by Iraqi women had put on the table. Article 41 needs to be repealed. We have been demonstrating and speaking about it and writing petitions against it for 13 years.
Then again, the strongest idea of the Iraqi government is the religious extremist idea, at this point. If they repealed this article, it would be as if they were announcing the failure of their political message.
I would say this article is the most important one to address.
The other thing is that the constitution does not have an article that protects personal freedoms in Iraq. I don't know what to say, what we should repeal, because the personal freedoms have not been enshrined in our laws. The reason I'm addressing this is that almost 1,000 women are killed in honour killings, which continues to happen, and the Iraqi government does not want to address it.
Domestic violence, trafficking, and sectarian violence continue to be the rule, and there are no shelters for women to go to and to be protected in. Iraqi officials still continue to say that this is an issue that will destroy our traditional values and some officials say religious values. I don't know what values those are that allow violence against women, but we know for sure that we need legislation that allows the NGOs to function, to open the shelters at this point. We know that for the 30 to 40 women who are hiding in our shelters now, we need the legal cover to make the function acceptable in Iraq.
This is a piece of negotiation that can be done. Between the years 2016 and 2017, we have reached the point, in our work in Iraq, at which some logistical support from the Canadian government can get us to the table of negotiation. We have addressed it to the head of the women's committee in Parliament, and we also included in the project building shelters for women in the transitional zone between ISIS and Iraq, where women have been compromised between ISIS rapes and Iraqi tribes' honour killings.
We have our projects on the table. We need logistical support to be taken seriously by our government and for them to step into the 21st century. It's unbelievable that in the 21st century, almost—I will throw the number out because I'm an activist, and activists throw numbers out sometimes—5,000 are sexual slaves in western Iraq, more than 6,000 women are being trafficked in broad daylight in Iraq proper, and 1,000 women are being killed in honour killings every year, and the government does not think of it as an issue of priority. For them to believe that women are real citizens there needs to be some talk from the international community who have supported their efforts so far.
I am not really an expert on the national action plan of Canada and how it supported efforts in Iraq, but I would like to know more about it, if there is any information. I will be going back to Iraq next month, and my colleagues will be interested to know more about that.