At a crossroads

About this book

"Almost eight years after US-led forces invaded Iraq, the country's commitment to meeting its human rights obligations is far from assured. In 2010, Human Rights Watch conducted research in seven cities across Iraq and found that, beyond the continuing violence and crimes associated with it, human rights abuses are commonplace. The rights of Iraq's most vulnerable citizens, especially women and detainees, are violated with impunity, and those who would expose official malfeasance or abuses by armed groups do so at enormous risk. The rise in tribal customs and religiously-inflected political extremism since 2003 has had a deleterious effect on women's rights. Increasingly, women and girls are victimized in their own homes for a variety of perceived transgressions against family or community honor. Trafficking in women and girls in and out of the country for sexual exploitation is widespread. Extremists and unknown assailants continue to kill journalists and bomb their offices. Increasingly, journalists find themselves harassed, intimidated, threatened, detained, and physically assaulted by security forces attached to government institutions or political parties. Iraqi interrogators routinely abuse detainees, regardless of sect, usually in order to coerce confessions. Thousands of internally displaced persons now reside in squatter settlements without access to basic necessities such as clean water, electricity and sanitation. Armed groups proclaiming intolerant ideologies have continued their assaults on minority communities, decimating Iraq's indigenous populations, and forcing thousands to flee abroad with no plans to return. And years of armed conflict have resulted in thousands of war amputees who find themselves relegated to the margins of society, unable to find work, access adequate medical care, or obtain new prostheses and wheelchairs."--P. [4] of cover.