Middle East/North Africa: Arab Spring for Women Too

Women’s Rights Recommendations for Transitional Political Processes

Background:

Women were active in the demonstrations leading to the ouster of presidents Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali inTunisia. They were membersof committees set up to protect neighborhoods and protest sites. Thousands joined their male counterparts in marches against authoritarian governments. The pro-democracy movements in both these countries included women’s equality in the principles they espoused, along with democracy, and religious tolerance.However, once the protest phase ended and the transitional political processes began, women were sidelined. Women activists feel that their voices and their calls for equality were ignored.

Human Rights Watch met with women’s rights activists in Tunisia and Egypt. They told us that emerging political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and An-Nahdain Tunisiapose specific challenges for the advancement of women’s rights in these countries. The Muslim Brotherhood has said that it will not nominate a woman or Coptic Christian as a presidential candidate but is not opposed to allowing for that possibility in the constitution. In Tunisia, women’s rights activists are calling for the review of some provisions to the personal status code to make sure that they ensure equal rights, to inheritance for example. But an An-Nahda spokesman, Amin Belhaj, saidpublicly on March 10, 2011 that his party sees no need for such a review because the Qur’an is clear on matters of equality between men and women, and on inheritance.

Women’s rights activists in both countries are preparing for upcoming elections. In Tunisia, elections for a constituent assembly are scheduled for October 23, and in Egypt, parliamentary elections are to be held in September and presidential elections in December. It is vitally important for the international community to help support women’s rights to political participation to ensure that women are represented in the decision-making processes. At the same time, there is a real opportunity to address women’s human rights and to call for the repeal of legal provisions that discriminate against women.

Egypt

Women were not included in the constitutional committee formed to draft seven amendments to the constitution. Only one woman was appointed to the new27-member cabinet. Furthermore, protests calling for women’s equality after the revolution weremet with hostility and violence. The women’s rights activists with whom we met with in Cairo told Human Rights Watch that the hostility shown to women’s rights groups in Egypt prior to the revolution has not abated.

The women who marched to Tahrir Squarecalling for equality and full citizenship on March 8, International Women’s Day, encountered a group of hostile men. Some of the men beat, verbally assaulted, and sexually harassed the marchers.

On May 10, Nehadabu el-Komsan, director of theEgyptianCenter for Women’s Rights and a prominent activist, received a threatening letter from an unknown person who identified himself as “the emir (prince) of an Islamic emirate” because of her work to improve the country’s personal status code.

Women’s rights groups areconcerned that the military council serving as the interim government has cancelled the quota reserving 64 seats for women out of 444in parliament, but have provided no alternative. Although women’s rights activists supported the quota system, they did not support the way it was carried out under the former government because women from the ruling party held the majority of the seats. The new system should maintain requirements to include women at least at that level, and temporary special measures may be needed in the interim to ensure that it happens.

Key Recommendations to the government of Egypt

  1. Ensure that women are represented in political, legislative, and human rights reform processes, including committees set up to address legal reforms.
  1. Ensure that women are represented in government by adopting appropriate mechanisms, including temporary measures,that guarantee that women will have equal opportunities to become candidates for elected offices.
  1. Include a constitutional guarantee of equalitybetween men and women that would enable judges to strike down discriminatory laws and to order a halt to discriminatory practices.
  1. Review existing legislation and make a commitment to remove discriminatory provisions in personal status laws, including provisions that discriminate against women in matters of divorce, custody and inheritance.
  1. Review existing legislation and make a commitment to remove discriminatory provisions in the penal code that decrease sentences for murder under special circumstances in which a woman is the victim -- for instance, if a girl or a woman’s chastity was in question(arts. 17 and 60).
  1. Move toward full decriminalization of adult consensual sex, and in the meantime, ensure that criminal penalties for sex outside of marriage do not discriminate against women (article 277).
  1. Adopt and enforce legislation protecting women from all forms of violence, including laws criminalizing domestic or family violence, sexual violence and sexual harassment.
  1. Enforce legislation banning female genital mutilation (FGM) and continue education and awareness campaigns to decrease the high prevalence of this practice. Remove the three reservations Egypt entered when it ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) regarding nationality, equality within marriage, and the submission of disputes by other states parties on the interpretation and application of the convention.
  1. Adopt the optional protocol to the convention allowing individuals or groups to submit complaints about women’s rights violations to the CEDAW committee, the committee tasked with monitoring the CEDAW Convention.
  1. Sign and ratify the protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol).
  1. Publicly condemn sexual assault and other attacks on women demonstrators, and women who are potential political candidates, and investigate and prosecute those responsible for such attacks.

Tunisia

Women head only 2 of the 31 ministries in the provisional government. Fewer than half the members of The High Authority Council for the Achievement of the Revolution’s Objectives, Political Reform and Democratic Transition are women. The council is a nongovernmental body formed after the ouster of President Ben Ali that consistsof members of civil society organizations, political parties, and others.

Women have had somewhat more positive experiences in the transitional political process in Tunisia, though, because of the gains the women’s rights movement has made there over the years. However, women’s activists are concerned that the rights they have worked hard to achieve may be lost.

Women’s concerns have increased because of the return to public and political life of Islamist parties such as An-Nahda, after being banned for two decades.This party has made some progressive statements about women’s equality and its support for women’s rights, such as its opposition to legalizing polygamy. But, its statement that it is not interested in reviewing the personal status code on issues of equality and inheritance because these matters are clear in the Qur’an, causes concern. The provisions of the current code discriminate against women. Such statements by An-Nahda have led many women’s rights activists to question the party’s sincerity and motives.

Based on the 1990s French experience, Tunisians recently adopted a gender parity system for upcoming parliamentary elections to guarantee equality between men and women in elective positions. The names of male and female candidates will appear alternately on political party lists.

It is important for women to have an equal role in the elections to choose a constituent assembly, to draft a new constitution. Tunisian women’s activists say that while women have made much progress, these legal provisions requiring equal participation are not always honored.

Key Recommendations to the government of Tunisia

  1. Support the recently adopted gender parity electoral system in for the upcoming constituent [assembly elections, and ensure that women generally are integrated into political processes and serve at decision-making levels.
  2. Ensure a constitutional guarantee of equality between men and women that would serve as a basis for eliminating laws and practices that discriminate against women regardless of whether Tunisia’s new constitution includes a declaration that Tunisia is a Muslim state.
  1. Review existing legislation and make a commitment to remove discriminatory provisions in personal status and penal laws and directives, to guarantee equal rights for women to inheritance, and the right of Muslim women to marry outside their religion–a right that Muslim men and women of other religions already have.
  1. Remove formal reservations to CEDAW, including those related to marriage and inheritance and the right of a woman to choose her residence and to pass her nationality onto her husband and children.
  1. Sign and ratify the Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.