Samenvatting

According to several provisions of Iraq's Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and its obligations under International Law, at first sight it seems that minority women and girls of Iraqi Kurdistan are adequately protected under Iraqi and International Law.
However, in reality these minority women suffer discrimination, inequality, social exclusion, and many forms of violence, including domestic violence, honour crimes, rape, sexual exploitation, forced and early marriage, and FGM. Their subordinate status in Iraqi Kurdistan affects almost all spheres of life, including health, employment and family life due to entrenched cultural, religious and social factors but also because of many years of constant violence, internal migration, lack of government capacity and contradictions and discriminatory effects in Iraqi Constitutional Law, the PSL and the Penal Code.
Through thorough research at an international, national and regional level this research highlights the human rights violations at hand and outlines which action needs to be taken in order to tackle them. This research aims at producing an overview of how Iraqi Laws negatively influence minority women's living conditions within the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and finding possible solutions to their problems from a national and regional point of view and compare those to not only figure out which laws and in what way these laws affect them, but also make the KRG, the Iraqi Central Government as well as International Organizations conscious of the effect of their decisions. To do the latter, this research tries to answer the question: "How does the Iraqi legal system, in particular the Penal Code and the PSL, negatively affect minority women living in Iraqi Kurdistan, and how could their situation be improved?”