GENEVA, Dec 12 (Reuters) - The rights of Iraqi women and girls are under growing threat in the home, school, workplace and political sphere, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Women head one in 10 households in Iraq, where violence is curtailing their freedoms and poverty is limiting their access to basic services including health care, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement. "Women should be equal partners in the future of Iraq but their rights risk slipping away without positive action to protect them," said Roger Wright, UNICEF representative for Iraq, who is based in Amman, Jordan. Every day dozens of Iraqi women are widowed and the number of families struggling to cope without a wage-earner is starting to overwhelm social services, according to UNICEF which says that equal rights for women is the key to stronger societies. Only 14 percent of Iraqi women between 16 and 60 years old are currently employed, against 68 percent of men, U.N. figures show. Women leaving home to find work puts both them and their children at risk, UNICEF said. "With threats to girls attending school on the increase, more and more families are being forced to choose between education and safety for their daughters," it added. Women's representation in Iraq's government is "still disproportionately low", accounting for only 25 percent of parliamentarians, according to UNICEF. Separately, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that many Iraqis forced to flee violence in central Iraq have gone to the relatively stable but poor Misan province in the south, where they are in urgent need of food and water. Almost 30 percent of some 2,120 recently displaced families -- or roughly 12,720 people -- interviewed in Misan said they did not have regular access to clean water, a much higher percentage than in other provinces, the Geneva-based IOM said. "Some people rely on streams or broken water pipes as their main source of water," IOM spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy told a news briefing. Many uprooted families lack access to fuel because of rising costs or unavailability, yet fuel will be essential in the winter months for cooking and heating, he added.
