One million widows in Iraq

Iraq’s violent conflict has left as many as one million widows over the past few years, the country’s Minister of Women’s Affairs Bayan Nouri said yesterday.

In a press release Nouri said that women are deeply affected by the ongoing clashes, where many men have died.

She stressed that the psychological and humanitarian situation of women in Iraq is very difficult.

Nouri described the situation of Yazidi women, who were abducted by militants affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS), as “a very important problem”, noting that they do not have precise figures about the number of those abducted due to conflicting sources of information.

“We also lack information about the number of women killed by the group,” she said.