Leaderships of the Women National Committee discussing with other political activists and journalists during the meeting held at the WNC center in Sana’a.
A large group of women reunited on Monday, August 11, around a table at the Women National Committee (WNC) offices in Sana’a, the technical committee of the government’s Supreme Council for Women Affairs. Their objectives were to discuss a common strategy to defend their demand to reserve 15 percent of Parliament seats for women (“women’s quota”) and to approve a communiqué on the issue of women’s political participation, to serve as a response to the fatwa recently issued by the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC) against the women’s quota, which they plan to send to all major political figures of the country in the coming days.
Women members of certain political parties, such as the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), the Yemen Socialist Party (YSP) and al-Haqq party, as well as female representatives from various Ministries (e.g. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Endowment and Guidance), together with women who work in the media, discussed the proposed “three political axes” for the WNC’s platform, which later extended to a further debate. These three points relate to the need to activate and coordinate support for women’s political participation in the 2009 Parliamentary elections, the need for implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)—especially Article Four, which recommends temporary affirmative action for women’s political participation until actual gender equality is achieved, and the importance of the role of civil society organizations and media in supporting women’s presence in the political arena.
Hooria Mashoor, deputy chairperson of the WNC, stressed during the meeting that the “media is not paying enough attention to the quota issue and newspapers, together with television news channels, should address the issue of the women’s quota as a major issue that affects all Yemeni women and not one that is directed to one specific candidate or another.” She also called on all women politicians to ignore their party affiliations and fight for the implementation of the quota as individuals.
On July 15, the efforts made by these and other women for the implementation of the women’s quota were attacked by an non-governmental authority established to “fight against vice and defend virtue,” (VVC), which issued a fatwa (a legal pronouncement) against the women’s quota and women’s political participation in general, which they determined as haram (forbidden), or against Islam. Immediately, another women’s organization, the Yemen Women Union (YWU), responded with a note to the Parliament that cited passages from the Qur’an in order to prove that the fatwa was not in accordance with the principles of Islam.
The WNC for its part discussed with women hailing from various political institutions how to best respond to this issue, since “now is the right moment to do so because the government is currently in the process of amending laws, which happens every four years, and now is when we need to make the government include our demand for a quota for women in the upcoming parliamentary elections,” Mashoor stated. With regard to the fatwa, the WNC raised the question of whether it was legitimate for the Vice and Virtue Committee to issue a legal pronouncement of this kind in the first place. In its opinion, such a decision should be issued by the national religious authority formed by the ‘ulama, a group of religious leaders and scholars, and not by an organization that the WNC considers as political and not religious.
Zafraan Ali Almahana, a journalist and activist at Saudi-funded Middle East Research Center for Human Rights in Sana’a, stressed at the WNC meeting the necessity to address the lack of information that the religious leaders have about women’s political participation and its coherence with Islam. The other members present agreed on the necessity to talk to prominent sheikhs and religious leaders in order to explain to them what the quota is and why it does not contradict Islam. They also decided to send a letter to the president, the speaker of the Parliament, the prime minister, and the official body of the ‘ulama regarding this issue. The correspondence will also deal with women’s conditions in Yemen with regard to terms of education and participation in the labor force as well as contain a reminder about Yemen’s commitment to the CEDAW. The convention was ratified by the former southern People Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in 1984 with reservations on arbitration. Given that the laws from unified Yemen were not amended to conform to the standards of the CEDAW, this is another demand now made by the WNC.
A reading of the final draft of the letter concluded the meeting, with unanimous approval to send the text as is, without changes.
---Yemen Observer
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