Iraq’s main government official for women’s affairs has quit just six months into the job to protest a lack of resources for a daunting task — improving the lives of tens of thousands of women left poor or widowed by the war.
Female lawmakers on Sunday urged Nawal al-Samarraie, officially state minister for women’s affairs, to change her mind and demanded that the government get serious about empowering women.
The 47-year-old gynecologist, who submitted her resignation last Tuesday, said that things quickly went downhill after she assumed her post on July 22 when her Sunni political party ended a boycott to rejoin the Shiite-dominated government.
Her office — with a staff of 18 — was not a full ministry and had insufficient authority or resources to help the widows and other women facing great hardship after nearly six years of war, she said.
Al-Samarraie said she finally submitted her resignation on Tuesday, in part because her budget was slashed from US$7,500 to US$1,500 per month as part of this year’s overall government spending cuts due to plunging oil prices.
“I reached to the point that I will never be able to help the women,” she said in an interview on Sunday. “The budget is very limited ... so what can I do?”
Her resignation has cast a spotlight on the overwhelming problems facing Iraqi women. An untold number have lost their husbands or other male relatives to violence or detention since the 2003 US-led invasion, often leaving them alone with children and no safety net.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS