Iraqi women organize parties

In recent years, it is no longer surprising to distribute invitation cards for a divorce ceremony in Iraq, where women celebrate their divorce through private parties and invite their friends and relatives of women.

This phenomenon has emerged as a result of the spread of marital problems and the delay of the husband to divorce. The husband begins threatening his wife that he will leave her without divorce or marriage, so some of them have to resort to deposition

In this context, Marwa, one of the divorced women, told her story to Al Maghrib Today, after my suffering for many months and my husband's stalling to sign the divorce document, I decided to hold a ceremony expressing my joy to end my worries and problems. "I booked a small hall, called my friends, and danced on the song "we divorced".

The scene was strange, a noisy party and women dressed dancing and distributing candies to the audience, while the woman who organized the party was wearing brightly colored evening gown with a golden necklace and face full of cosmetics.

The ceremony, hosted by Marwa Talib, 39-year- old, and an employee in the Iraqi government sector, was not celebrating of a new baby or her engagement, but a declaration of her divorce. The enthusiastic woman set a candle on a cake as if she had entered a new life, and her divorce was a project to live in a different life.

For her part, the social researcher Nairan Youssef, that the divorce rate has risen significantly in recent times, and it became a normal thing. "There are many reasons that lead women to hold parties after divorce, including increasing problems between spouses and reaching a dead end and the husband's insistence not to activate the option of divorce are all reasons that lead to the celebration of women divorce as an expression of their salvation from married life," she added.

She also believes that the openness of society to life and development especially after 2003 is also one of the reasons that help women to hold celebrations for divorce.

Divorce cases in Iraq have risen sharply in recent times to become the highest proportion of cases witnessed by the Iraqi courts. According to official statistics from the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council, about 20 percent of marriages, which took place in the last ten years, ended with divorce. Official figures show that the total divorce reached 517 thousand in the past ten years.