Family Breakdowns Soar

"I am his partner for life, but he wants to marry a 20-year-old little, pretty, slim girl,” said a woman whose husband began to look for excuses to divorce her once his salary was raised.

She was speaking outside the Baghdad divorce courts, where she came to try and win custody of her children along with alimony.

The deteriorating security situation and changes in society have caused a divorce boom in Iraq with experts warning that women are losing out.

IWPR spent a day talking to women at the divorce courts, which are busier than ever since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Attorney Qusai al-Rasheed blamed the looting and the corruption that has plagued Iraq for the soaring divorce rate. Rich with ill-gotten gains, many men are now marrying much younger women, he said.

Divorce is still a social taboo in Iraq and none of the women interviewed by IWPR would give their names.

A woman pulling her three children down a court corridor said she decided to follow her attorney’s advice to grant her husband a divorce and forego alimony payments in exchange for custody of her children.

“He is an alcoholic and jobless. He has no property or salary so how can I get alimony payments?” she said. “I want my children to grow up far away from him.”

Down the hall, the family of a woman celebrated her divorce.

She was an engineer married to an attorney, who became increasingly greedy in their marriage and expected her to pay for more and more of their living expenses, including rent and other bills.

Court legal adviser Sufyan Abbas believes the increasing numbers of divorces are part of the continuing deterioration of society and family due to the years of wars.

Abbas added that women often lose out in divorce cases, as it is usually only the men who can afford lawyers and are aware of their rights.

Suha al-Azawi, the head of a women’s rights organisation, said her group conducts awareness campaigns for women getting a divorce and finds attorneys willing to work pro bono to represent them in court.

Attorney Miriam Ali Musa said women need all the help they can get, citing cases in which a husband urges his attorney to deprive his wife of her rights, knowing that she doesn’t have enough money to hire an attorney to represent her.

“The law guarantees the women their rights, but it is the man who violates the women’s rights,” said Musa.

Sahire Rasheed Jabir is an IWPR trainee in Baghdad.