Human Rights Abuses and Concerns about Women’s Health and Human Rights in Southern Iraq

Citation:

Amowitz, Lynn L., Glen Kim, Chen Reis, Jana L. Asher, and Vincent Iacopino. 2004. “Human Rights Abuses and Concerns about Women’s Health and Human Rights in Southern Iraq.” The Journal of the American Medical Association 291 (12): 1471–79.

Authors: Lynn L. Amowitz, Glen Kim, Chen Reis, Jana L. Asher, Vincent Iacopino

Abstract:

The people of Iraq have endured 35 years of repression and widespread human rights violations under the Baath regime of Saddam Hussein. After the 1991 Gulf War, the regime suppressed popular uprisings among 14 of 18 governorates, including major insurrections in the predominantly Kurdish North and mostly Shi’a South. Thousands of Iraqis have reportedly disappeared, but the full scope of these atrocities, especially those perpetrated against the Shi’a after their 1991 uprising against the Baath regime, is unknown. More than 150 mass graves have been discovered recently throughout Iraq, some of which may contain victims of the 1991 Baath regime repression of this Shi’a uprising. 

The purpose of this study was to assess the nature and scope of human rights abuses in southern Iraq since the Shi’a uprising in 1991. More specifically, the study was designed to identify specific human rights abuses and perpetrators, to determine health and human rights concerns with a focus on women’s rights, and to examine Iraqi views on women’s rights and roles in society and provisions for community health and development.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Development, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Health, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2004