Broken home: women’s housing, land and property rights in post-conflict Iraq
New research by the Norwegian Refugee Council reveals that displaced women are much worse off than men: they are 11 per cent more likely to face barriers impeding them from going back home after years of suffering in displacement camps since the end of the war against Islamic State group in their areas of origin.
The barriers include inability to regain access to their property, re-establish ownership and seek compensation for damaged property. Nine per cent of women surveyed across Dohuk, Ninewa, Kirkuk and Anbar governorates said their property was occupied by community or tribal leaders, militias and security forces.
Of over 1,000 women surveyed, 43 per cent rejected the statement that women had a right to own all types of property, despite Iraqi law that protects women’s housing, land and property rights. One in five women said, erroneously, that under Iraqi law women were not entitled to property following divorce, and 18 per cent said they had no inheritance rights. One in three said that in reality women received nothing following divorce and nearly one in four (23 per cent) said they had no inheritance rights in practice.
NRC surveyed 1,002 people, held 64 focus group discussions and held 59 in-depth interviews across the four conflict-affected governorates. The results also indicate that the mere suspicion of affiliation to IS group may deny women the right to prove their ownership on homes and lands even if they possess official documents.
Making their situation worse, the ongoing Covid-19 measures, including the shutdown of law courts and of legal dispute resolution services, as well as loss of livelihoods, make women even more vulnerable. A recent assessment by NRC found that 64 per cent of respondents in rented houses predicted that they would not be able to pay rent in the next three months, with 42 per cent of them expecting to be evicted as a result.
Reem, 27, from Mosul
Reem had been displaced since 2017.
“I wish I had a home to return to, but I have nothing. I recently bought a piece of land. In fact, the land I bought belongs to the government. This land was supposed to be used for agriculture purposes, but real estate companies sell it to people and they give us a paper showing that we have paid for this land,” says Reem, 27 from Mosul city, who has been living in a displaced camp since 2017.
Reem worked as a cleaner in the NRC camp management office for a while, and from the money she collected from her work, she bought the land in an agricultural area. This land might be taken by the government at any time.
“I bought one of these lands in an area near Hamam al-Alil because that’s all I could afford,”
Reem is divorced from her husband who owns the house, and she ended up living in the camp.
“The government should help us to find a place to live in or at least give us compensation. We cannot return back to our areas of origin as nothing is left there. I no longer have a house or a family living in that area.”
Photo: Helen Baker / NRC
