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GUEST: Yifat Susskind, Communications Director at MADRE

Earlier this week, a new report on gender based violence in Iraq was released during the 51st United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Released just before International Women’s Day and the soon-to-be fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the report highlights the often overlooked systematic campaign of violence against Iraqi women. It is called “Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq” and is published by MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization. “Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy,” carefully documents the use of violence by reactionary fundamentalists against particularly those women who are considered problematic in a theocratic state – such as professionals, artists and lesbians. The U.S. government, contrary to its own rhetoric, is blamed for failing to protect Iraqi women and even enabling the very militias carrying out the violence against them through its “Salvador Option” policies.

Download the report here: http://www.madre.org/articles/me/iraqreport.pdf