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Iraq
One of the customers tried to harass me, and when I refused and fired him, the employer blamed me for losing customers. He even started reducing my salary until he tried to harass me directly, and when I refused, he fired me.
As is the case with most wars, the worst outcomes are often borne by children and women. Most Syrian women have adapted to combat crises and assumed the task of securing the living requirements for their families. They are frequently forced to perform multiple roles due to the decline in funding support from international organizations concerned with the issues of refugees and displaced persons in Iraqi camps.
The Iraqi government closed the camps in central and western Iraq in late 2020, maintaining some camps in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Many women (four out of five people were women and children) preferred to leave the camps in search of job opportunities.”
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2020, the Iraqi Parliament rejected a draft asylum law designed to provide a legal structure for refugees and asylum seekers in Iraq. The Corona pandemic also exacerbated the protection risks for refugees, prompting many women and children to beg, with food rations declining, not enough to feed them.
The number of Syrian refugees in Iraq in 2020 reached about 242,163 Syrians, with women constituting 48 percent of the total number. More than 90 percent of the Syrian refugees were stationed in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, with 40 percent of them living in 10 refugee camps.
Many refugee women decided to come to the capital, Baghdad, which is witnessing a high rate of unemployment, in search of job opportunities. Most of them work in cafes designated for men, or barber shops and restaurants, but unfortunately, most were not lucky in finding job opportunities and were forced to beg, especially after being subjected to physical exploitation and expulsion by employers.
A journey of begging and exploitation
Nadia Fares (23 years old), whose elegant appearance was unable to overcome the ugliness of war and poverty, moved between luxury cars in the streets of Baghdad, asking for help in a shy voice. “As is the case with all refugee women, we fled Syria—me, my mother, and my younger brothers—after the planes bombed all the homes in my city, which had turned into rubble. My younger brothers were begging for food at the time. When I arrived at a camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, we stayed there for two years, but it was not easy. So, I left the camp as soon as I learned that there were companies that employed cleaning women to work in homes.”
Nadia applied to become a cleaner in one of the cafes spread across Baghdad, frequented by men only. There, she was subjected to verbal and sometimes physical harassment by the cafe’s patrons. “One of the customers tried to harass me, and when I refused and fired him, the employer blamed me for losing customers. He even started reducing my salary, and when he tried to harass me directly, I refused, and he fired me.”
The journey of exploitation does not end with Nadia and other similar refugee women who were forced by necessity to beg or work in humiliating conditions lacking protection. They still face insults and physical harassment from vehicle drivers whenever they seek help. “They think that I might give them my body in exchange for food or some money,” says Nadia.
Nadia, along with other women and children, shares leftover food from a restaurant that is discarded at the end of each day. She seems content with what she receives, as it provides an alternative to the hands that attempt to exploit her body.
Since its inception and activity after World War I, the International Labor Organization has concluded agreements aimed at protecting working women. The most important of these agreements include Convention No. 3 of 1919 on maternity protection and Convention No. 190 of 2019 on violence and harassment in the world of work, among others that focus on organizing women’s work, determining their wages, and protecting maternal workers.
Worker protection laws
Iraqi Labor Law No. 37 of 2015 prohibits the employment of women in work that is exhausting or harmful to health in Article 58/Second, which stipulates: “It is prohibited to employ working women in work that is exhausting or harmful to health and which are specified in accordance with the instructions issued pursuant to Article (67/Third) of this law.” the law”.
Refugee working women lack the legal papers that grant them legitimacy to reside and work in the country, leaving them prey to employers and harassers.
Feminist activist Faten Khalil says that she followed the cases of displaced women and refugees who were subjected to harassment and exploitation by their employers. Tonight, the owner of a club forced a refugee under the age of eighteen, who was working as a table cleaner, to provide sexual services. She was afraid to report him because she had lost all her family members and could not. Know who to go to for help.
Faten calls on humanitarian organizations to provide care and protection to those who were forced by war conditions to flee in search of safety, accept any work, and submit to unfair treatment by employers. She also calls for inspection visits to women’s workplaces and raising their awareness to prevent them from being exploited, especially since most of them They endure psychological, material, and social problems due to what they have been through.
One worker, who chose not to disclose her name due to work-related reasons, states that poverty and lack of education are the main reasons employers exploit refugee women’s financial needs. Most of them are afraid to report incidents of assault or harassment, given the absence of governmental or civil bodies to which they can file complaints and seek action.
Elaf Karim (35 years old), a mother of two children, came to Iraq seeking work after her husband was killed by armed groups in Syria. However, she faced the threat of being fired from her job in a medical clinic (for the equivalent of $50 a month). The clinic’s owner refused to allow her two children to be with her while she worked. Elaf, struggling to make ends meet, cannot afford to leave her children with someone to take care of them, and her salary is insufficient to cover the rent for the room she occupies, despite having a university degree. Additionally, there are limited opportunities for women with children to find work in housekeeping.
Human Trafficking
Mays Aziz (22 years old), a Syrian refugee working as a cleaner in a labor company, criticizes the way institutions publish pictures of female workers on social networking sites, turning them into commodities and subjecting them to negative comments accompanied by sexual harassment. She sees this practice as similar to human trafficking.
Mays went through a painful experience when her personal photos were circulated with obscene comments on the commercial pages of companies providing cleaning services. One comment even suggested renting her for physical exploitation, according to her account.
Brigadier General Aziz Sabah from the Ministry of Interior in the capital, Baghdad, states, “In the past, many refugees who did not have official residency were vulnerable to exploitation by parties that forced them into forced labor and begging in exchange for securing their housing inside Baghdad and the provinces. However, these stories were eliminated by facilitating refugee residency.” In Iraqi Kurdistan, despite the spread of begging, we are working to reduce the violations that women are exposed to on the street, by resorting to checkpoints.”
Fear of Reporting Violence
Intisar Jabbar of the Labor Union follows up and pursues these issues, stating that young Syrian refugee women “face enormous challenges in their quest to obtain a suitable job opportunity in host countries. Many rely on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, and these obstacles include legal restrictions and restrictions on movement, poor working conditions, and low wages. Refugee women may be exposed to violence and harassment due to the lack of official systems for referring these cases for investigation and the fear that this will negatively affect their residency issue.” Jabbar points out “violations by employers in the Iraqi private sector due to failure to activate Labor Law No. 37 of 2015. Syrian refugee women work in the private sector and are exploited by working more hours.”
At the same time, host countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey face challenges in meeting the basic needs of refugees, while these countries grapple with severe economic and social challenges.
Jabbar believes that refugees are among the vulnerable segments that deserve care. Prioritizing care for these segments would reduce tension between local communities. He commends the public benefit services provided by host countries when offering a safe haven for the displaced and refugees. Jabbar emphasizes that host governments must “achieve flexibility in issuing work permits to help refugee women obtain jobs in several sectors, including male-dominated ones.”
Among the solutions proposed by the Labor Union to help refugee women in Iraq are training in various activities and professions, providing funding for women entrepreneurs, and imparting self-defense skills to women.