Women protest against polygamy in Arbil

Iraq-PM ARBIL / IraqiNews.com: Nearly 200 women from 40 women’s organizations staged a demonstration in front of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Kurdistan RegionG) building in Arbil calling to amend a Personal Status Law article allowing polygamy. “We demand equality between men and women in the Personal Status Law, on which the parliamentary legal committee is currently working,” one of the organizers of the demonstration, Siran Abdullah, told IraqiNews.com. “We are particularly against men’s polygamy. Law no. 62 of the year 2001 banned polygamy with the exception of certain cases,” Siran, who is also a member of Kurdistan’s Women Union, added. Arbil, also written Erbil or Irbil, is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited in the world and is one of the largest cities in Iraq. The city lies eighty kilometers (fifty miles) east of Mosul. In 2005, its estimated population was 990,000 inhabitants. The city is the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region and the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG). It hosts the headquarters of the Kurdistan region ministers and parliament. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, only isolated, sporadic violence has hit Arbil, unlike many other areas of Iraq. Parallel bomb attacks against the Eid celebrations arranged by the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan RegionG President Massoud Barazani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) killed 109 people on February 1, 2004. Responsibility was claimed by the Islamist group Ansar al-Sunnah, and stated to be in solidarity with the Kurdish Islamist faction Ansar al-Islam. Another bombing on May 4, 2005 killed 60 civilians. Despite these bombings the population generally feels safe.   SS (S)/SR 1