AXEL
MODEL UNITED NATIONS
HUMAN
RIGHTS COUNCIL (HRC)
TOPIC:
WOMEN RIGHTS IN ARAB NATIONS
Women
in the Arab world, as in other areas of the world, have throughout
history experienced discrimination and have been subject to restrictions of their freedoms and rights.
Some of these practices are based on religious beliefs, but many of the
limitations are cultural and emanate from tradition as well as religion.
These main constraints that create an obstacle towards women's rights and
liberties are reflected in laws dealing with criminal justice, economy,
education and healthcare.[
Politics[edit]
There have been
many highly respected female leaders in Muslim history, such as Shajar al-Durr (13th century) in Egypt,
Queen Orpha (d. 1090) in Yemen and Razia Sultana (13th century) in Dehli.
In the modern era there have also been examples of female leadership in Muslim
countries, such as in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey. However, in
Arabic-speaking countries no woman has ever been head of state, although many
Arabs remarked on the presence of women such as Jehan Al Sadat, the wife of Anwar El Sadat in Egypt, and Wassila
Bourguiba, the wife of Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, who have strongly influenced
their husbands in their dealings with matters of state.[38] Many Arab countries allow women to vote in
national elections. The first female Member of Parliament in
the Arab world was Rawya Ateya, who was elected in Egypt in
1957.[39] Some countries granted the female franchise in
their constitutions following independence, while some extended the franchise
to women in later constitutional amendments.[40][41][42][43][44]
Arab women are
under-represented in parliaments in Arab states, although they are gaining more
equal representation as Arab states liberalise their political systems. In
2005, the International Parliamentary
Union said that 6.5 per cent of MPs in the Arab world were
women, compared with 3.5 per cent in 2000. In Tunisia, nearly 23 per cent of
members of parliament were women. However, the Arab country with the largest
parliament, Egypt, had only around four per cent female representation in
parliament.[45] Algeria has the largest female
representation in parliament with 32 per cent.[46][47]
In the UAE,
in 2006 women stood for election for the first time in the country's history.
Although just one female candidate - from Abu Dhabi - was directly elected, the
government appointed a further eight women to the 40-seat federal legislature,
giving women a 22.5 per cent share of the seats, far higher than the world
average of 17.0 per cent. [2]
The role of women
in politics in Arab societies is largely determined by the will of these
countries' leaderships to support female representation and cultural attitudes
towards women's involvement in public life. Dr Rola Dashti, a female candidate in Kuwait's 2006 parliamentary
elections, claimed that "the negative cultural and media attitude towards
women in politics" was one of the main reasons why no women were elected.
She also pointed to "ideological differences", with conservatives and
extremist Islamists opposing female participation in political life and
discouraging women from voting for a woman. She also cited malicious gossip,
attacks on the banners and publications of female candidates, lack of training
and corruption as barriers to electing female MPs. [3] In
contrast, one of UAE's female MPs, Najla al Awadhi,
claimed that "women's advancement is a national issue and we have a
leadership that understands that and wants them to have their rights." [4]
Women's right to vote in the Arab world[edit]
Women were granted
the right to vote on a universal and equal basis in Lebanon in 1952,[48] Syria (to vote) in 1949 [49] (Restrictions or conditions lifted) in 1953,[50] Egypt in 1956,[51] Tunisia in 1959,[52] Mauritania in 1961,[53] Algeria in 1962,[54] Morocco in 1963,[55] Libya [56] and Sudan in
1964,[57] Yemen in 1967 [49] (full right) in 1970,[58] Bahrain in 1973,[59] Jordan in 1974,[60] Iraq (full right) 1980, [59] Kuwait in 1985[61] (later removed and re-granted in 2005) and Oman in
1994.[62] Saudi Arabia announced that it would give women the right
to vote in 2015.[63]
Economic role[edit]
In some of the
wealthier Arab countries such as UAE, the number of women business owners is
growing rapidly and adding to the economic development of the country. Many of
these women work with family businesses and are encouraged to work and study
outside of the home.[64] Arab women are estimated to have $40 billion
of personal wealth at their disposal, with Qatari families being among the
richest in the world.[65]
Education[edit]
Since Islam
encouraged equality between the sexes, Islam has also encouraged equality in
education. In all Arab countries, girls, just like boys, usually get their full
education in highschool and even move onto getting a Graduate diploma, and this
has been going on for a long time after the 1960s.
Travel[edit]
Women have varying
degrees of difficulty moving freely in Arab countries. Some nations prohibit
women from ever traveling alone, while in others women can travel freely but
experience a greater risk of sexual harassment or assault than they would in
Western countries.
Women have the
right to drive in all Arab countries except Saudi Arabia.[66] In Jordan, travel restrictions on women were
lifted in 2003.[67] "Jordanian law provides citizens the
right to travel freely within the country and abroad except in designated
military areas. Unlike Jordan's previous law (No. 2 of 1969), the current
Provisional Passport Law (No. 5 of 2003) does not require women to seek
permission from their male guardians or husbands in order to renew or obtain a
passport." In Yemen, women must obtain approval from a husband or father
to get an exit visa to leave the country, and a woman may not take her children
with her without their father's permission, regardless of whether or not the
father has custody.[68] The ability of women to travel or move freely
within Saudi Arabia is severely restricted. However, in 2008 a new law went
into effect requiring men who marry non-Saudi women to allow their wife and any
children born to her to travel freely in and out of Saudi Arabia.
From Jordan to the United Arab Emirates, a look at
women's rights across the Arab world on the occasion of International Women's
Day.
Jordan
Women can
travel freely without permission from their husbands or male relatives. They
hold public posts and female pilots, police officers and soldiers. Recently,
Jordan's parliament passed a law that allows Jordanian women married to
foreigners to pass on their nationality to their children. However, domestic
violence and "honor killings" still happen.
Saudi Arabia
King
Abdullah has granted women the right to vote and run in the 2015 municipal
elections. The king also appoints 30 women to the top advisory body, the Shura
Council. The body cannot legislate and its male-dominated chamber has so far
not taken up a request by three female members to discuss the issue of allowing
women to drive. The Saudi government also has rolled out a law penalizing
domestic abuse, including neglect. The law does not address the guardianship
system that grants male family members authority over their female relatives.
United Arab
Emirates
Mothers can
now pass their citizenship on to their children — giving them access to
generous social services and stable government jobs. The UAE is among the most
socially liberal of the Gulf states and authorities have made an effort to hire
women to prominent government roles. However, traditional attitudes toward
women have run up against the country's modern image. A 24-year-old Norwegian
woman was sentenced to 16 months in prison last year for having sex out of
marriage and on alcohol charges after she claimed she was raped by a co-worker.
She and her alleged attacker, who was jailed on similar charges, were later
pardoned after an international outcry.
Kuwait
Women earned
the right to vote for the first time in 2005, and in 2009, four women won seats
in parliament. As in nearby Qatar, they aren't able to convey citizenship to
their children. Those born to Kuwaiti mothers do get the same benefits as
Kuwaiti citizens up until they're 21. That includes free education, health
care, and monetary benefits. Unlike in neighboring Saudi Arabia, women can
drive and travel on their own. They aren't required to cover their heads,
though expectations of modest dress remain as in other Gulf countries.
Iraq
There are no
laws focusing on domestic violence against women. The country's 2005
constitution states that a quarter of parliament seats and government positions
must go to women. This later was extended to provincial and local councils. But
with the growing power of the religious institutions, women in some areas have
been forced to put on veils and abaya — the long, loose black cloak that covers
the body from shoulders to feet.
Women are
members of parliament, Cabinet ministers and one of the country's vice
presidents. The Syrian nine-member government delegation that went to peace
talks earlier this year over its civil war included two women. In northeastern
Syria, the Al-Qaida-breakaway group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant forced women in areas under its control to cover their bodies, including
hands and faces. In other rebel-held areas, where less radical Islamic groups
are in control, most women wear the Islamic veil.
Twenty-six
women were slain by relatives in the West Bank and Gaza in 2013, twice as many
as the year before, according to official figures. The rise stems from mounting
economic difficulties in the Palestinian territories, compounded by ongoing
leniency for those killing in the name of "family honor" and social
acceptance of violence against women. Activists have urged Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas to repeal sections of a penal code that allows for
short sentences for the perpetrators.
ON AN average day a woman walking down
a street in Cairo can expect catcalls. On a bad day she may get persistent unwanted
telephone calls, be flashed at or groped. Sexual harassment is so rife that
almost every woman in Egypt has experienced it, according to a UN report
released earlier this year. And it is getting worse. In a ten-day period this
summer, Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment, a local organisation, recorded 186
cases. And rape, judging by an array of reports, has become more frequent.
In the 1950s and 1960s women began to make slow but
steady strides in parts of the Arab world, such as Syria and Egypt. Even
parts of the conservative Gulf began more recently to follow suit. In several
Gulf countries female students now outnumber males at university. Across the
region, more women are working. Saudi Arabia, where they must cover
themselves in public, cannot drive cars and must remain under male
“guardianship”, looks more like the exception than the norm.
But the turbulence of the Arab spring appears to
have slowed or even reversed progress. Saferworld, a London-based research
group, notes that women in such places as Egypt, Libya and Yemen have found it
hard to have their rights upheld. Threats against politically active women have
increased. Female representation amid the turmoil has not noticeably risen. In
Egypt it has plunged. In a survey of 22 Arab countries recently conducted
by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Egypt came bottom, rather controversially
two rungs below even Saudi Arabia.
The rise of Islamist influence is partly to blame.
Religious laws, allowing men to have four wives and to inherit twice as much as
a woman, have in the past been curtailed as governments embrace more secular
norms. But devout preachers have sought to reinstate restrictions. Syrians fear
a resurgence of conservative laws if rebels linked to al-Qaeda, who are growing
in strength, take over. “They tell my wife not to wear trousers and to cover
entirely,” says Muhammad, a fighter from Latakia province on Syria’s coast.
“But that is not our culture.”
Even in places where governments are relatively
progressive on social issues, old-fashioned attitudes die hard. A recent survey
of 850 people in Jordan’s capital, Amman, found that nearly half of teenaged
boys and 20% of girls of the same age thought “honour killings” of women deemed
to have flouted sexual norms could be justified. Many people uphold Islamic
traditions to define themselves against the West, says Sarah Leah Whitson of
Human Rights Watch, a lobby group based in New York.
Governments often do little to protect women. Women often
speak of harassment by soldiers and police. A constitutional amendment to set a
minimum age for marriage in Yemen, where child brides are standard, is still
being argued over. The authorities in Egypt rarely act even when painstaking
documentation of violence against women is presented, says Mariam Kirollos, a
human-rights activist. In brighter spots such as Lebanon, personal freedoms in
Beirut, the capital, such as a woman’s right to work and to wear and drink what
she likes, are jealously guarded. Yet even there, legal protection for
women—against domestic violence, for instance—is often absent. As in many
other Arab countries, a woman married to a foreigner cannot pass her
Lebanese nationality on to her children.
In the past, dictators tended to take ownership of the
women’s rights issue to impress the West. When they fell, grassroots groups had
to start from scratch. Over time this may lead to punchier and more genuine
movements. In Egypt a group has launched an initiative called Harassmap that
uses crowdsourcing to track assaults and encourage women to report them.
In Saudi Arabia women are posting films of themselves behind the wheel on
YouTube. Lebanese women are calling for a law against domestic violence.
And women’s groups across the region are linking up on the internet. “There are
so many movements on the ground”, says Ms Kirollos, “that things will change.”
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