With a parliamentary election in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq scheduled for October 20, interest is growing among major political parties for candidates who are women or members of ethnic and religious minorities.
Whatever the outcome of the election, the region’s quota system has guaranteed 30 seats for women and five for Turkmen, Christians and Armenians out of a total of 100 seats in parliament.
The quota system has provided an incentive for political parties, especially the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), to reach out to active members of those minority communities and women who are popular among voters.
Roshna Jamil, a female candidate in Halabja city, told VOA that the quota system might secure some representation for women in parliament, but it comes at a cost of increased intervention from established political parties.
“Women should not rely on the quota system forever, because if it continues like this, political parties will nominate women as a strategy to win more seats,” Jamil told VOA.
According to United Nations Women, the U.N. entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, women’s voices are missing from decision-making “in every region of the world.” The organization said that in 2024, women held only 27% of seats in national parliaments and 35.5% of seats in local governments.
In Iraq, women were largely absent from the political arena until 2004, when the country’s constitution required female representation in the parliament to be not less than a quarter.
But in the north of the country, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has boasted of taking bolder steps to bring women to power, such as appointing a female speaker of the parliament in 2019.
Despite the progress, women would be unlikely to achieve significant representation in the parliament without the quota system. In the region’s most recent election in 2018, only 13 of the 35 women who were elected received enough votes to have entered the parliament without it.
According to the Irbil-based Middle East Research Institute, the lack of support for female candidates is related to “the progress of gender equality in Kurdistan overall.”
Haider Nimat, head of the PUK electoral department in Sharazoor, told VOA the nomination of more capable women to run for political positions will help narrow the gender gap in the region, adding, “We want to provide an opportunity to them … and we are giving more importance to those who can win a seat on their own.”
According to data provided by Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission, nearly 2.9 million people from the region’s four provinces are eligible to vote in the election. The total number of candidates is 1,191 people — 368 of them women.
For Jamil in Halabja, the campaign period is a good time to raise awareness of women’s rights.
She said her message for voters was to trust female candidates because “there are dozens of women who are more capable than men to govern.”
She told VOA, “As a woman, I have come to compete with all candidates regardless of their gender. I’m not settling for the quota system which, I think, is only a temporary solution.”
Sazgin Muslih, a Turkmen minority candidate running to win a seat in Kifri town for the Iraqi Turkmen Front, shared Jamil’s frustration about political involvement from the PUK and the KDP, which he said have more resources to help their preferred candidates win.
“We want the Kurdish parties not to interfere in the affairs of the [minority] communities, although these parties support their own candidates,” he said. “If the Kurdish parties do not interfere, 80% of the Turkmen of Kifri are with us.”
In its first election in 1992, the Kurdistan Regional Parliament allocated five quota seats for Christians. In 2005, that quota increased to 11 seats for Christians, Turkmen and Assyrians.
However, the Iraqi Federal Court in a surprise move in February abolished all the seats following a complaint by the PUK, which had argued that the KDP controlled minority parties in the parliament.
The Iraqi high court decision prompted a political boycott from the minority parties and the KDP that lasted until late May when the court decision was reversed, and five seats were returned to the system.
This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish Service.
