Background on the annual V‑Day Spotlight

Each year V‑Day creates a Spotlight around a particular group of women who are experiencing violence with the goal of raising awareness and funds to put a worldwide media spotlight on this area and to raise funds to aide groups who are addressing it. 

 V- Day Spotlight 2005: Women Of Iraq, Under Siege

 Since the US occupation and regime change in Iraq, women have lost more freedom than they've gained.

 Incidents of rape and abduction by organized gangs has increased fear of sexual violence in Baghdad, deterring women from returning to work or seeking employment and families from permitting their daughters to go to school. Victims refrain from contacting the police or hospitals, for fear of being killed for bringing shame on family honor. Armed conservative religious groups are pressuring schools and workplaces to require women and girls to wear the veil under threat of acid attack or abduction. Girl's enrollment and attendance is on a steep dive across the country.

 Of the only four women members of Iraq's former Governing Council and interim Cabinet, two faced assassination attempts - Aquila al Hashimi was killed, while Nasreen Mustafa al-Burwari survived though her three bodyguards died. Women detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison reported repeated rapes by US soldiers. At least three women from Al Anbar, a Sunni Muslim region, were killed by their families after coming out of Abu Ghraib pregnant. Upon helping the fight against the introduction of Sharia law to replace existing secular family law that protects women's rights, a Kurdish leader of a women's organization in Arbil was attacked by her own brothers. Heeding conservative religious protests, US military indefinitely postponed the swearing-in of the first woman in Najaf to be appointed a judge. Lack of jobs and security for women in general has forced some to resort to prostitution, at grave risk of an honor killing.

 Even under these conditions there are a few beacons of change and hope. Several Iraqi women's organizations are braving the hostile climate and death threats to demand women’s representation in public bodies and are working to protect women's lives in private, helping shield them from honor killings.

 With your help, we anticipate that our 2005 Spotlight: Women of Iraq, Under Siege will help effect real change in the violent conditions for women and girls in that city.

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For more information please visit www.vday.org