Geneva: Serious human rights abuses including the torture of detainees are ongoing in Iraq, even though the general security situation has improved, a United Nations report published today said. There are "ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities, amidst pervasive impunity of current and past human rights abuses," said the UN Iraq mission s report on the human rights situation in Iraq for the first half of this year.
The mission said it found through visits to prisons that many prisoners have been held for many months without recourse to defence, even though some have not even been charged formally with a crime. Minorities also continue to be targetted by organised armed militia, with members of the minority groups having to pose as Kurdish or Arab to get access to health care or education. Meanwhile, women also faced harassment on their mode of dress, while in the Kurdistan region, the mission still gets reports on violent killings, burning and domestic violence of women. A UN independent expert last month also raised concern on the domestic assault on women, in particular at the rise of honour killings, in which women deemed to have broken moral codes are killed by members of their own family, and the impunity which is afforded the perpetrators.
