Iraq Constitution based on Islamic Law on 8/15 ? (less rights for WOMEN)

[cthrumatrix]

Democracy Now talked about this today....

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia, can you talk more about women in Iraq? Interestingly in our next segment, we'll go to Cindy Sheehan, the American mother who's sitting outside President Bush’s ranch, whose son Casey died in Iraq. You talk a great deal about women in Iraq, what their situation is today.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, the situation for women in Iraq is tenuous, but one of the issues that I don't think is addressed enough is the fact that because the U.S. reconstruction had been so biased towards U.S. corporations and not focusing on what Iraqis need, the conditions, with the lack of water, the lack of electricity, the lack of health care, of course, falls disproportionately onto women and the need to provide those resources themselves and to make sure that their families have access to those resources. So women in Iraq lives have been more dominated by the need to just meet their basic family subsistence needs.

Women's rights in Iraq under Hussein had been some of the best, certainly in the Middle East, and had been guaranteed, as I said, under the Hussein era constitution. Now much of that is very much up in play as the negotiations seem to be putting significantly more attention onto Islamic law. There is however a very powerful women's rights movement in Iraq that is fighting very aggressively to stem that tide, and that is certainly an issue that is still up in the air, and we'll have to wait until Monday to find out what happens.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/12/1422244

Imagine women's rights could go "backwards" from when Saddam was in charge.

What the hell would women around the US say?

[cthrumatrix]

1. same interview...Paul Bremmer laws "privatized oil"...Iraq loses thier Oil

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yes, essentially what has remained almost off the table are the 100 orders put in place by Paul Bremer, the U.S. envoy to Iraq during the period of the formal occupation, which essentially transitioned all of Iraq's economic laws from a state-controlled economy to a market-controlled economy. These included provisions for the privatization of all of Iraq's state-owned industries, changes to trade laws, patent laws, banking, media, you name it and it was transformed for investment so that foreign companies would have complete access to the Iraqi economy.

There was an initial draft of the constitution in Iraq that returned Iraq to a social welfare state, reflecting the original constitution that had been in place during the Hussein era, which essentially guaranteed maternal and child health benefits, child care, the role of the state in guaranteeing education, that natural resources belonged to the state, etc. That draft was essentially eviscerated and the current draft puts all of that back into the market and probably most importantly makes the condition of natural resources far more difficult to determine what the outcome is going to be for Iraq's oil.


same above link