Amnesty examined the main factors fueling impunity for perpetrators of GBV, based on the accounts of officials, caseworkers, lawyers, and survivors in its report published Wednesday, “Daunting and Dire: Impunity, Underfunded Institutions Undermine Protection of Women and Girls From Domestic Violence in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.”
The rights watchdog said that laws criminalizing violence against women and girls in the Kurdistan Region “remain wholly inadequate or merely ink on paper due to crucial gaps, exacerbated by slow legal processes, a lack of specialized judges, and vague laws empowering judges to issue sentences not on the level of severity of the crimes.
A main obstacle, highlighted by the report, is survivors are required to file a complaint against their abusers themselves, as public prosecutors rarely initiate such charges. Additionally, domestic violence survivors need to undergo a mandatory reconciliation committee with their abuser before the case moves to trial.
“Women and girls who file criminal complaints against their abusers frequently face reprisals, threats and intimidation for doing so from the abuser or their families, often aimed at pressuring them to drop the charges,” read the report.
When charges are dropped, the only safeguard the courts require is for the abuser to sign a “pledge of no harm” which has proven to be ineffective in many cases. The report recounted the case of two teenage girls who were killed by their father a month after he had signed the pledge.
“Women and girls often face humiliation at the hands of judges who prioritize what they consider “family reunification” over the protection of women, disincentivizing women and girls from seeking justice and leading many women and girls to drop the complaints against their abusers.”
The report also decried the underfunding of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Interior’s Directorate of Combating Violence against Women (DCVAW) stating that the ministry has failed to allocate the legally-required annual budget for the entity, according to DCVAW officials.
“The lack of financial support, coupled with societal antipathy towards the DCVAW, hampers its ability to respond to complaints from survivors and support them through lengthy criminal proceedings, meaning survivors are put under even greater financial strain and have to navigate the court system alone.”
The KRG established a support hotline for victims of violence with the support of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 2018 - seven years after parliament passed its Combating Domestic Violence Law. The hotline was contacted more than 10,000 times in 2023.
There are three permanent shelters and one temporary shelter for victims of domestic violence across the Kurdistan Region. Amnesty criticized the shelters’ condition, describing them as “in disrepair, overcrowded, understaffed, and not adequately equipped for the needs of the survivors.”
Additionally, only people who are facing immediate threat of being killed or who have been seriously injured can access the shelters. Additionally, survivors can only leave after obtaining a court order once the case is resolved, which is often the case when the survivor drops the charges against their abuser.
The report stated that impunity for perpetrators of so-called honor killings continues to be “the norm” in the Kurdistan Region, adding that judges often show bias towards the male abusers and applied more lenient laws in severe cases.
In June, a Sulaimani court sentenced a man charged with burning his wife alive to life in prison. Dissatisfied with the verdict, the victim’s family decided to appeal the decision at the court of cassation, saying that the perpetrator should be sentenced to death. The ruling was overturned eight months later and the perpetrator was given the death penalty.
Amnesty called on the KRG to prioritize strengthening accountability measures, implement a moratorium on mandatory reconciliation, increase funding to DCVAW, provide adequate funding and support for the shelters and apply less strict entry and exit measures, and to “unequivocally reject discriminatory norms invoked by perpetrators to justify violence against women and girls.”
The Iraqi constitution prohibits the use of violence within the family, but only the Kurdistan Region has a law on domestic violence. Activists, humanitarians, and lawmakers have worked toward amending the domestic violence law to increase safety for women and vulnerable groups in addition to establishing more expedient legal options in the Region.
At least 30 women were killed in the Kurdistan Region in 2023, according to DCVAW. In 2022, the Region reported its highest femicide rate in years, with at least 44 women killed.
