"I depend on my sister," said Um Baqir. "My eldest daughter is in the final year of primary school. I don't want her to quit but it is getting too expensive. I can't afford it," she said, breaking down.
Of Iraq's widows, only 84,000 receive government support from the Ministry of Labour and Social Support - - between 50,000 and 120,000 Iraqi dinars - - 20-48 pounds - - a month.
"This is an analgesic ... not a solution," Moussawi said. Her committee has presented a draft law to parliament that would provide women without breadwinners with housing, to prevent them from resorting to desperate measures such as prostitution or from being exploited by militants.
Pleas to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government have fallen on deaf ears: the draft bill has yet to be voted on, despite being read in parliament twice.
"They are busy with politics and the security situation and forget about other things," Moussawi said.
Labour and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Sheikh Radhi agreed that his ministry paid widows too little.
"The sum is not enough but we pay what is being allocated to us, this is what is in the government's budget," he said.
CHARITY AND GOD
A report by aid groups found that 43 percent of Iraqis lived in "absolute poverty". Four million people needed food assistance and only one in three children under five had access to safe drinking water.
Many widows who seek help find the government bureaucracy impenetrable.
Um Aathraa, a 38-year-old mother of three, sells vegetables and makes just enough to cover her bus fare to and from the market. She received an allowance for three months but it suddenly stopped because of a problem with her paperwork.
Illiterate, but determined to put her daughters through school, she has spent the past five months trying to find out why the payment stopped and to have it restored.
"I have to pay the rent, I have to feed my daughters. I depend on charity," Um Aathraa told Reuters.
Some humanitarian organisations help widows and orphans where they can. One, Al-Musbah, takes in one child from each family and gives them a small allowance as well as clothing and books, provided they promise to stay in school.
"We are helping 105 families," said Al-Musbah's Abu Amjad as Hussein, a 12-year-old orphan, tried on shoes spilling from two big boxes in a corner of his Sadr City office.
One of the women Al-Musbah is helping, Um-Hassan, lost her husband, 9-year-old son and brother to a mortar round in Sadr City in 2004. Al-Musbah gives her 30,000 dinars a month for 11-year-old Hassan, the eldest of her three sons.
"Life is difficult," she sobbed as Hassan did his homework. "I want my children to keep going to school, I do not want them to lose their future. I do what I can, the rest (depends) on God."
