Perspective: "I want go to school and learn how to write"

BAGHDAD, 11 December (IRIN) - Aid agencies estimate that thousands of Iraqi parents do not send their daughters to school for cultural reasons and because of the general insecurity in the country. As a result of two decades of war and economic hardship, Iraqi schools have fallen into disrepair, enrollment has dropped, and literacy levels have stagnated, agencies say.

In the south of the country, where infrastructure is more deteriorated due to years of neglect, the situation is worse.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) estimates literacy rates to be less than 60 percent, or 6 million illiterate Iraqi adults. People in rural areas and women are worst off. Only 37 percent of rural women can read, and only 30 percent of Iraqi girls of high school age are enrolled in school, compared with 42 percent of boys.

Alia'a Haydar, 15, resident of the city of al-Samawah, some 240km south of the capital, dreams of the day when she will be able to read magazine articles on the latest fashion and music and also read the Quran, the holy Muslim book.

"I don't know how to read or write my name. My family says that girls should not study as their destiny is to marry and raise children. They say women that study and read in the end turn out to be prostitutes," Alia'a said.

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