In an attempt to reassert their power, Saudi Arabia's religious police have ordered shopkeepers in central Riyadh to get rid of all adorned abayas, the black robes worn by women in the kingdom, as shopping picks up ahead of the Eid holiday next week.
Salesmen in al-Maagaliah market, just across the block from the headquarters of the religious police, or mutawa'a , this week were turning away frustrated shoppers who wanted abayas with a hint of colour or decoration, telling them that shopowners could face fines or prison.
In recent years, the signature flowing robe that covers Saudi women from head to toe started to show some form, with trimmed sleeves, beads or colour, a sign of relaxation of the strict social norms in the kingdom.
Though the changes were subtle, abayas provoked a tug of war between the liberal voices lobbying to give women more choice and conservative religious institutions determined to impose their austere ways through the religious police.
Liberal commentators say the religious police who roam shopping malls and public places are using the crack-down to demonstrate their continued authority af-ter recent moves have curb-ed their arbitrary powers.
After allegations of gross violations of human rights led to media uproar, the mutawa'a have been banned from chasing suspects without an escort from the regular police. They have also been forced to carry government-issued identification cards.
Women's rights activists, however, are concerned that the crackdown on the abaya marks a setback after early symbolic gains achieved since King Abdullah came to power in 2005.
"They [the mutawa'a ] want women to be faceless, nameless and shrouded in blackness,'' said Samar Falan, a women's rights activist and writer based in the city of Jeddah. "We kept quiet when we should have confronted the radicals. I believe Muslim women should dress modestly and cover their hair but they do not have to look gruesome."
Saudi women have been pushing for more rights and the government has sought to promote the participation of women in the workforce. But with every step forward comes another step back.
The mutawa'a does impose its morality on men too, forcing them sometimes to cut their hair or choose more modest shirts. But while men have a range of dress options - western attire or traditional white Saudi garb - women essentially have none.
"They should focus on fighting vices, not women,'' says Buthaina Nassr, another activist.
By Abeer Allam for the Financial Times in Riyadh
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
UAE: Government attaches top priority to women's education
Dr Hanif Hassan, the UAE’s Minister of Education, reviewed the efforts of the UAE in supporting education and creating an international education system.
At a recent seminar he attended in Washington D.C., he said, “The ministry’s mission collaboratively supports our students, schools and partners in the delivery of a world-class educational system by planning, implementing, and monitoring high quality educational standards, policies, programmes, and guidelines.”
He also emphasised that the “21st century teacher project” would train 10,000 teachers while Dh200 million would be spent on the programme.
He highlighted the strides made by the country in women’s education.
“The UAE currently occupies the first rank in women’s education, especially higher education.
“The number of women who completed their high school education exceeded men.
“Women have become an important source of talents, skills and economic resource in the UAE,” he said.
- Khaleej Times
At a recent seminar he attended in Washington D.C., he said, “The ministry’s mission collaboratively supports our students, schools and partners in the delivery of a world-class educational system by planning, implementing, and monitoring high quality educational standards, policies, programmes, and guidelines.”
He also emphasised that the “21st century teacher project” would train 10,000 teachers while Dh200 million would be spent on the programme.
He highlighted the strides made by the country in women’s education.
“The UAE currently occupies the first rank in women’s education, especially higher education.
“The number of women who completed their high school education exceeded men.
“Women have become an important source of talents, skills and economic resource in the UAE,” he said.
- Khaleej Times
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bahrain: Move to Integrate Arab Youth with Regional Development
Manama — About 400 Arabs have showed their keenness to become members of the first Arab Youth Society in the region. The society will be established officially in Bahrain after Eid Al Fitr.
President of Bahrain Youth Society and founder of Arab Youth Society Ali Sharafi told Khaleej Times on Tuesday that the society is a dream come true to unite the Arab youth in a single organisation and associate themselves with regional development.
The Ministry of Social Development here announced in August the launch of the Arab Youth Society that will soon set up its offices in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
“From the second day of Eid, I will start my second tour to Arab cities starting with Doha to attract more youth to join the organisation,” he said while highlighting that 19 Arabs are official members in the society. Membership is open to all Arab youth as the society aims to promote youngsters in the region.
- Khaleej Times
President of Bahrain Youth Society and founder of Arab Youth Society Ali Sharafi told Khaleej Times on Tuesday that the society is a dream come true to unite the Arab youth in a single organisation and associate themselves with regional development.
The Ministry of Social Development here announced in August the launch of the Arab Youth Society that will soon set up its offices in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.
“From the second day of Eid, I will start my second tour to Arab cities starting with Doha to attract more youth to join the organisation,” he said while highlighting that 19 Arabs are official members in the society. Membership is open to all Arab youth as the society aims to promote youngsters in the region.
- Khaleej Times
Yemen: Women respond to the Vice and Virtue Committee-( Part VI )
This is the sixth part of a series of interviews that aim to reflect the opinion of several women’s organizations, members of political parties, researchers and journalists that discuss the establishment of the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC) in Yemen and explain their views towards women’s political participation. This series reflects a debate around the quota system for women, the current obstacles in political participation, as well as a broader discussion regarding the upcoming parliamentary elections of 2009.
On this occasion The Yemen Observer interviewed Rashida al-Hamdani, Chairperson of the Womens National Committee (WNC). Trained as a nurse, al-Hamdani studied psychology and education in India. She was an independent candidate during the 2006 local council elections, in which her goal was to make a statement and show to other women that if she could do it, they could do it. She explains: “I lost, but I think the awareness I created was a great result, especially for tribal women.”
YO: -When was the first time you heard about the VVC? What do you know about this authority?
Rashida al-Hamdani (RAH): -I did not know about this VVC until they announced their meeting in July, but prior to that, one of our staff members at the WNC went to Houdeidah for work and when she went to stay at a hotel, they refused her because she did not have a mahram or male companion. That was alarming to us and I reacted spontaneously: I think I wrote right away to the Ministry of Tourism about this issue. Then I heard about the official establishment of the VVC. The first thing that was alarming to us was that they were all men, no women was present. The second was how they gathered some 5,000 people. Where did they get the money from and how did they obtain the support to do so?
Then, it got worse because the first thing they announced was against women, against the quota system. They announced, among other things, that women meeting men in an office was something forbidden assuming that women go to work for sexual things and not to work. We do not want to respond to these accusations, we do not have to defend ourselves against this because it is absurd. The president’s program includes the quota and that is what we have to fight for.
As the WNC, I do not see the necessity to get in a political game of tit for tat. Of course, whenever we have meetings we talk about it, we are not afraid of it, but this organization, which is a non-governmental organization (NGO) is against the government and we do not want to get into conflicts with others, so we keep on working, which is the most important. We have a strategy of our own: to advocate for women’s rights. Continue with our work and be successful at it is our strategy.
YO: -How did the fatwa they issued against the quota system affect your work?
RAH: -Not at all. Not everybody can issue a fatwa. My question is: are they entitled to issue a fatwa? Because fatwas come from recognized organizations, and when that is the case, then and only then the state follows them. We have an organization of the ‘ulama in Yemen, which is a governmental body and which announces Ramadan, Eid, everything, and they are the only ones that can issue a fatwa. That is number one, the legal aspect of this fatwa. The second is related to the fact that, when the president announced his policies, we have to respect them because a policy is a direction by the president, an order by the head of the state.
The failure of one issue is the failure of the president, and he took seriously the quota. So I do not think the government will hinder its own work. The NGOs complement this work, and in the end is a work towards the success of the work of the government. I am sure that the establishment of the VVC was prepared before, I am sure they had to present it to the president, explain what they were there for, what they will do, what they will announce. But these people are an NGO for us, they are not official ‘ulama,’ and only they can issue a fatwa. What we should have is a response from the official ‘ulama.
YO: What is your opinion about the reaction of the society towards the VVC?
RAH: -People are fighting back; they are writing in newspapers, there is a web site where people report about this issue, the debate is becoming bigger and bigger. As for the government, the government should retaliate. The quota is a policy from the government and they should defend it. We were almost about to take women’s quota to the parliament, and now this sets our work back Its a deviation in our work, an unnecessary deviation. In any case women’s organizations like the Yemen Women Union (YWU) reacted immediately and they conducted many actions, even a small committee with lawyers was created to defend against these issues brought by the VVC. We work with them and with other NGOs, but we lead actions together with the government. When the government retaliates, we retaliate, we are a governmental institution and we have to act in unity with the government.
YO: Why is this happening now?
RAH: -They have been working on this for over two or three years, it was not done over night. There were reunions and debates before. There has been a big clash inside the Islah party over this issue because conservative groups have been pulling for these types of ideas. Being in a conservative country like Yemen, an organization like the VVC can have a big impact, and the liberal ‘ulama should explain this and retaliate, by saying something about the issue. We should target this response. Also it is conflicting and not clear because they say things against the president -their fatwa against the quota goes against the president’s program- at the same time that they support the president with ending the war in Sa’adah. That is a bit confusing to us.
YO: What is the WNC’s work in relationg to the quota system?
RAH: -We are pushing for 30 percent, the 15 is just the minimum we ask for. We worked with the YWU in protests to pressure over this issue. This forced the president to include the quota on his program. We have been working on this issue since the year 2000 or earlier. One of our concerns in the amendment of the electoral law was to include this quota system. Again we brought it back, and the president announced he would support us with this, which gave us more hopes to make this a reality. I think the VVC also provoked more space to talk about the quota. Now everyone talks about it and people ask and discuss about this system to include women in electoral bodies, which has been a positive impact. We take advantage of this debate to talk still more about it and make our goals advance. I am sure we will win with this.
YO: You ran as a candidate for the Local Council elections of 2006, after this experience, what do you define as the main obstacles for women in the political arena?
RAH: -The most critical thing is that women do not have money, and this is crucial because you need money to campaign. Money is always with men, they can sell their lands and get money, women cannot. When I was a candidate I had that money although I did not know I would spend that much, but then I did not want to withdraw so I continue. It has been two years now since that, and I do not regret it at all. The money I used for that, was the money I had saved for my children but ran as a candidate because I wanted to give women hope, an incentive, let them know :‘If I can do it, you can do it.’ Even if I did not succeed I did not care because I wanted to break the silence. Educated women have to work for this, work more at the party level. In my view I needed to start from the bottom so people would know my work, that is the best way to have a greater impact and then people will trust you more. For me I think that rooted work is crucial, because policies stay at another level unless you implement them.
It takes time, women need money, they have to be known, they have to provoke an impact and all that takes time. Especially in rural areas, this work is harder sometimes. If you are a candidate with party support then the story changes because they are behind you, they support you, but still you have to be elected by the people, the members of the party, but even this is easier than an independent candidate fighting alone. Women have more chances when they run with a party, definitely, and that is also a problem because parties are not always there. For the long run, the parties need to accept women as candidates. Picture’s caption: Rashida al-Hamdani, Chairperson of the Women National Committee (WNC) and candidate for the local council elections of 2006.
- Yemen Observer
On this occasion The Yemen Observer interviewed Rashida al-Hamdani, Chairperson of the Womens National Committee (WNC). Trained as a nurse, al-Hamdani studied psychology and education in India. She was an independent candidate during the 2006 local council elections, in which her goal was to make a statement and show to other women that if she could do it, they could do it. She explains: “I lost, but I think the awareness I created was a great result, especially for tribal women.”
YO: -When was the first time you heard about the VVC? What do you know about this authority?
Rashida al-Hamdani (RAH): -I did not know about this VVC until they announced their meeting in July, but prior to that, one of our staff members at the WNC went to Houdeidah for work and when she went to stay at a hotel, they refused her because she did not have a mahram or male companion. That was alarming to us and I reacted spontaneously: I think I wrote right away to the Ministry of Tourism about this issue. Then I heard about the official establishment of the VVC. The first thing that was alarming to us was that they were all men, no women was present. The second was how they gathered some 5,000 people. Where did they get the money from and how did they obtain the support to do so?
Then, it got worse because the first thing they announced was against women, against the quota system. They announced, among other things, that women meeting men in an office was something forbidden assuming that women go to work for sexual things and not to work. We do not want to respond to these accusations, we do not have to defend ourselves against this because it is absurd. The president’s program includes the quota and that is what we have to fight for.
As the WNC, I do not see the necessity to get in a political game of tit for tat. Of course, whenever we have meetings we talk about it, we are not afraid of it, but this organization, which is a non-governmental organization (NGO) is against the government and we do not want to get into conflicts with others, so we keep on working, which is the most important. We have a strategy of our own: to advocate for women’s rights. Continue with our work and be successful at it is our strategy.
YO: -How did the fatwa they issued against the quota system affect your work?
RAH: -Not at all. Not everybody can issue a fatwa. My question is: are they entitled to issue a fatwa? Because fatwas come from recognized organizations, and when that is the case, then and only then the state follows them. We have an organization of the ‘ulama in Yemen, which is a governmental body and which announces Ramadan, Eid, everything, and they are the only ones that can issue a fatwa. That is number one, the legal aspect of this fatwa. The second is related to the fact that, when the president announced his policies, we have to respect them because a policy is a direction by the president, an order by the head of the state.
The failure of one issue is the failure of the president, and he took seriously the quota. So I do not think the government will hinder its own work. The NGOs complement this work, and in the end is a work towards the success of the work of the government. I am sure that the establishment of the VVC was prepared before, I am sure they had to present it to the president, explain what they were there for, what they will do, what they will announce. But these people are an NGO for us, they are not official ‘ulama,’ and only they can issue a fatwa. What we should have is a response from the official ‘ulama.
YO: What is your opinion about the reaction of the society towards the VVC?
RAH: -People are fighting back; they are writing in newspapers, there is a web site where people report about this issue, the debate is becoming bigger and bigger. As for the government, the government should retaliate. The quota is a policy from the government and they should defend it. We were almost about to take women’s quota to the parliament, and now this sets our work back Its a deviation in our work, an unnecessary deviation. In any case women’s organizations like the Yemen Women Union (YWU) reacted immediately and they conducted many actions, even a small committee with lawyers was created to defend against these issues brought by the VVC. We work with them and with other NGOs, but we lead actions together with the government. When the government retaliates, we retaliate, we are a governmental institution and we have to act in unity with the government.
YO: Why is this happening now?
RAH: -They have been working on this for over two or three years, it was not done over night. There were reunions and debates before. There has been a big clash inside the Islah party over this issue because conservative groups have been pulling for these types of ideas. Being in a conservative country like Yemen, an organization like the VVC can have a big impact, and the liberal ‘ulama should explain this and retaliate, by saying something about the issue. We should target this response. Also it is conflicting and not clear because they say things against the president -their fatwa against the quota goes against the president’s program- at the same time that they support the president with ending the war in Sa’adah. That is a bit confusing to us.
YO: What is the WNC’s work in relationg to the quota system?
RAH: -We are pushing for 30 percent, the 15 is just the minimum we ask for. We worked with the YWU in protests to pressure over this issue. This forced the president to include the quota on his program. We have been working on this issue since the year 2000 or earlier. One of our concerns in the amendment of the electoral law was to include this quota system. Again we brought it back, and the president announced he would support us with this, which gave us more hopes to make this a reality. I think the VVC also provoked more space to talk about the quota. Now everyone talks about it and people ask and discuss about this system to include women in electoral bodies, which has been a positive impact. We take advantage of this debate to talk still more about it and make our goals advance. I am sure we will win with this.
YO: You ran as a candidate for the Local Council elections of 2006, after this experience, what do you define as the main obstacles for women in the political arena?
RAH: -The most critical thing is that women do not have money, and this is crucial because you need money to campaign. Money is always with men, they can sell their lands and get money, women cannot. When I was a candidate I had that money although I did not know I would spend that much, but then I did not want to withdraw so I continue. It has been two years now since that, and I do not regret it at all. The money I used for that, was the money I had saved for my children but ran as a candidate because I wanted to give women hope, an incentive, let them know :‘If I can do it, you can do it.’ Even if I did not succeed I did not care because I wanted to break the silence. Educated women have to work for this, work more at the party level. In my view I needed to start from the bottom so people would know my work, that is the best way to have a greater impact and then people will trust you more. For me I think that rooted work is crucial, because policies stay at another level unless you implement them.
It takes time, women need money, they have to be known, they have to provoke an impact and all that takes time. Especially in rural areas, this work is harder sometimes. If you are a candidate with party support then the story changes because they are behind you, they support you, but still you have to be elected by the people, the members of the party, but even this is easier than an independent candidate fighting alone. Women have more chances when they run with a party, definitely, and that is also a problem because parties are not always there. For the long run, the parties need to accept women as candidates. Picture’s caption: Rashida al-Hamdani, Chairperson of the Women National Committee (WNC) and candidate for the local council elections of 2006.
- Yemen Observer
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Gulf States: Greater role for Gulf first ladies
DOHA: The first lady of this conservative Muslim sheikhdom walked up to the podium in a luxury hotel banquet room and sized up the crowd of mostly wealthy businessmen. "Do not be afraid to take risks and to try," she told them. "Think out of the box." Sheika Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned may have been wearing a traditional black headscarf and robe, but she took on a very untraditional role in rallying the men to support a $100 million initiative to tackle unemployment.
Like her counterpart in Dubai, Oxford-educated Princess Haya, Mozah is taking up the Western "first lady" model - activist, globe-trotting and involved in public affairs. It's a major change in a region where a ruler's wife is rarely seen and even her name is little known. She might be one of several; many emirs and kings in the Gulf have multiple wives - up to the four permitted by Islam, though sometimes the actual number is not well known. In some cases, the ruler will pick one to be the public "first lady".
The emergence of high-ranking wives on the public stage is part of the booming Gulf states' efforts to appear more in synch with the West as they seek investment, political clout and even big-name sporting events like the Olympics. It's also clearly a competition with other high-profile Middle East women, such as Jordan's Queen Rania. In recent years, Qatar - like the other small Arab countries lining the Arabian Gulf - has transformed its desert landscape into a financial and media hub.
High-rises and construction cranes now swarm the once-barren skyline of Doha, home to Al-Jazeera, the groundbreaking Arabic-language satellite TV station. Mozah, who is believed to be in her 40s, has taken a starring role in the transformation. She is one of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani's wives - it is not publicly known how many he has - and the only one who makes public appearances. Her most prominent role is as chairwoman of the Qatar Foundation, which launched Education City, a 1,012-hectare campus outside Doha and home to branches of prominent American universities like Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown.
Mozah is increasingly rivaling Queen Rania's globe-trotting, giving speeches at institutions in the US and Europe. Last year, she claimed one of the spots on Forbes magazine's list of the world's 100 most powerful women. At home, she wears traditional long robes. In the West she wears stylish business suits. "No Gulf royalty stands out as Mozah does," said Rima Sabban, a Dubai-based sociologist. "She broke all cultural barriers and shaped an image of a woman that is fully modern, fully confident and fearless of a backlash from the society... Mozah's strategy is part of her husband's goal to put Qatar on the world map.
In the even glitzier city of Dubai, Princess Haya is also breaking the rules - giving speeches on public welfare, working on public projects, appearing in magazines, keeping up personal websites and traveling the world. Dubai gained significant political influence in the region through the 2004 marriage of its powerful ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, with the 34-year-old Haya, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan.
They have one daughter, though the Dubai ruler has 18 other children, most with Sheika Hind bin Maktoum Al-Maktoum, the first of his wives to become publicly known. Like Mozah, Haya has taken on public roles, including chairing the Dubai International Humanitarian City, a cluster of Western and Islamic charities.
But Haya pushes the traditional boundaries even further. She is rarely seen wearing a headscarf and is a sports enthusiast, a rarity in the male-dominated region. She represented Jordan in equestrian show jumping in the 2000 Olympic Games in Australia, is president of the International Equestrian Federation and even has a truck-driving license, obtained in Jordan to help transport her horses.
Other wives of Gulf rulers are active in campaigning for women's rights, charity and humanitarian issues, particularly in Bahrain and Kuwait, but they have not sought foreign attention or assumed highly public roles. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates both have women Cabinet ministers, and the Emirates recently appointed its first female judge. The Emirates' minister of foreign trade is a woman, as is the founder of Amwal, a top investment company in Qatar.
Women make up 22.4 percent of the Emirates' work force and 32 percent in Qatar, according to government statistics, though it's difficult to know how many are foreigners. Seventy-seven percent of university students in UAE are women, according to the Ministry of Education and Labor. Three-quarters of students who graduated from Qatar University this year were women. Kuwait recently gave women the right to vote and run for office, and it has several female Cabinet ministers, though no woman has been elected to parliament.
It's a domino effect. Success in one country has spilled over into other countries in the region. When a ruler in one country appoints a woman to a high-level post, others follow. It's a healthy competition because everyone wants to show that they are democratizing," said Rola Dashti, a Kuwaiti economist who has run for parliament. Not every country in the region is eager to change. Saudi Arabia, a bastion of conservatism, still keeps its royal wives under wraps and remains the only country in the Middle East to bar women from voting, except for chamber of commerce elections in two cities in recent years.
No women sit in the kingdom's Cabinet, and women can't drive or travel without permission from a male guardian. A prominent Saudi princess, Lolwah Al-Faisal, made headlines two years ago at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland when she spoke out against the driving ban. Another princess, Adelah, gave a rare interview to an Arab women's magazine in 2006, and on occasion speaks at events.
The views of one 20-year-old Qatari university student in journalism, Fawzia, reflect both the change for women in the Gulf and the restrictions that still hold them back. Fawzia did not want her last name used because she said her family and university would regard it as immodest for a young woman to speak out on such matters. Yet she also said the ruling women are opening doors that were closed to her mother's generation. Mozah "has challenged tradition that wanted women to be restricted to the domestic field," Fawzia said. She added that Mozah has made it possible for women to have "a role in the society while also being a wife and a mother." - AP
Like her counterpart in Dubai, Oxford-educated Princess Haya, Mozah is taking up the Western "first lady" model - activist, globe-trotting and involved in public affairs. It's a major change in a region where a ruler's wife is rarely seen and even her name is little known. She might be one of several; many emirs and kings in the Gulf have multiple wives - up to the four permitted by Islam, though sometimes the actual number is not well known. In some cases, the ruler will pick one to be the public "first lady".
The emergence of high-ranking wives on the public stage is part of the booming Gulf states' efforts to appear more in synch with the West as they seek investment, political clout and even big-name sporting events like the Olympics. It's also clearly a competition with other high-profile Middle East women, such as Jordan's Queen Rania. In recent years, Qatar - like the other small Arab countries lining the Arabian Gulf - has transformed its desert landscape into a financial and media hub.
High-rises and construction cranes now swarm the once-barren skyline of Doha, home to Al-Jazeera, the groundbreaking Arabic-language satellite TV station. Mozah, who is believed to be in her 40s, has taken a starring role in the transformation. She is one of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani's wives - it is not publicly known how many he has - and the only one who makes public appearances. Her most prominent role is as chairwoman of the Qatar Foundation, which launched Education City, a 1,012-hectare campus outside Doha and home to branches of prominent American universities like Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown.
Mozah is increasingly rivaling Queen Rania's globe-trotting, giving speeches at institutions in the US and Europe. Last year, she claimed one of the spots on Forbes magazine's list of the world's 100 most powerful women. At home, she wears traditional long robes. In the West she wears stylish business suits. "No Gulf royalty stands out as Mozah does," said Rima Sabban, a Dubai-based sociologist. "She broke all cultural barriers and shaped an image of a woman that is fully modern, fully confident and fearless of a backlash from the society... Mozah's strategy is part of her husband's goal to put Qatar on the world map.
In the even glitzier city of Dubai, Princess Haya is also breaking the rules - giving speeches on public welfare, working on public projects, appearing in magazines, keeping up personal websites and traveling the world. Dubai gained significant political influence in the region through the 2004 marriage of its powerful ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, with the 34-year-old Haya, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan.
They have one daughter, though the Dubai ruler has 18 other children, most with Sheika Hind bin Maktoum Al-Maktoum, the first of his wives to become publicly known. Like Mozah, Haya has taken on public roles, including chairing the Dubai International Humanitarian City, a cluster of Western and Islamic charities.
But Haya pushes the traditional boundaries even further. She is rarely seen wearing a headscarf and is a sports enthusiast, a rarity in the male-dominated region. She represented Jordan in equestrian show jumping in the 2000 Olympic Games in Australia, is president of the International Equestrian Federation and even has a truck-driving license, obtained in Jordan to help transport her horses.
Other wives of Gulf rulers are active in campaigning for women's rights, charity and humanitarian issues, particularly in Bahrain and Kuwait, but they have not sought foreign attention or assumed highly public roles. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates both have women Cabinet ministers, and the Emirates recently appointed its first female judge. The Emirates' minister of foreign trade is a woman, as is the founder of Amwal, a top investment company in Qatar.
Women make up 22.4 percent of the Emirates' work force and 32 percent in Qatar, according to government statistics, though it's difficult to know how many are foreigners. Seventy-seven percent of university students in UAE are women, according to the Ministry of Education and Labor. Three-quarters of students who graduated from Qatar University this year were women. Kuwait recently gave women the right to vote and run for office, and it has several female Cabinet ministers, though no woman has been elected to parliament.
It's a domino effect. Success in one country has spilled over into other countries in the region. When a ruler in one country appoints a woman to a high-level post, others follow. It's a healthy competition because everyone wants to show that they are democratizing," said Rola Dashti, a Kuwaiti economist who has run for parliament. Not every country in the region is eager to change. Saudi Arabia, a bastion of conservatism, still keeps its royal wives under wraps and remains the only country in the Middle East to bar women from voting, except for chamber of commerce elections in two cities in recent years.
No women sit in the kingdom's Cabinet, and women can't drive or travel without permission from a male guardian. A prominent Saudi princess, Lolwah Al-Faisal, made headlines two years ago at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland when she spoke out against the driving ban. Another princess, Adelah, gave a rare interview to an Arab women's magazine in 2006, and on occasion speaks at events.
The views of one 20-year-old Qatari university student in journalism, Fawzia, reflect both the change for women in the Gulf and the restrictions that still hold them back. Fawzia did not want her last name used because she said her family and university would regard it as immodest for a young woman to speak out on such matters. Yet she also said the ruling women are opening doors that were closed to her mother's generation. Mozah "has challenged tradition that wanted women to be restricted to the domestic field," Fawzia said. She added that Mozah has made it possible for women to have "a role in the society while also being a wife and a mother." - AP
Yemen: Women respond to the Vice and Virtue Committee-( Part V )
This is the fifth part of a series of interviews that aim to reflect the opinion of several women’s organizations, members of political parties, researchers and journalists that discuss the establishment of the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC) in Yemen and explain their views towards women’s political participation. This series reflects a debate around the quota system for women, the current obstacles in political participation, as well as a broader discussion regarding the upcoming parliamentary elections of 2009.
In this issue The Yemen Observer interviewed Raufah Hassan: an academic, a researcher and a social activist. Hassan is currently professor of Media Studies at the University of Sana’a, where she is also a research member at the Gender Studies Center. Head of the Cultural Development Programs Foundation, Raufah Hassan accomplished her studies in Egypt, the United States and France. As a professor, she has taught Mass Media and Social Change, Gender Studies, and Islamic feminism theories among other courses.
Yemen Observer (YO): -How do you explain the establishment of the VVC in Yemen?
Raufah Hassan (RH): -I followed all the acts done by this group from the very beginning, so I know about the first poster they held half a year ago, where they presented 13 issues they were against and they collected 91 signatures from what they called “Scientist Sheikhs of Islam,” the ‘ulama. I analysed this poster and I presented my analysis in a paper at a conference.
I then drew attention to our colleagues at the Women National Committee and the Yemen Women Union, who did not know anything about it yet. I was very much concerned because their points attacked the possibility of making any modification of the laws for or in favour of women, considering that to be against Islam. We discussed that and we decided that we would not make it a bigger issue than what it was, so we did not lead any actions. Then I followed through the news that this group of people met with the President so as to ask him to allow them to form their authority in an official manner. First, they wanted their authority to be related to the President, to be it governmental, but the President refused and politely said that he would think about it and never did anything.
Then, they decided to hold another meeting in which they announced that they would have the form of a non-governmental organization (NGO), and given the freedom we have in Yemen to make groups, they did it. In the beginning they were attacked by many journalists who considered them to be a replica of the Saudi “moral police.” There were so many articles defending and attacking them before they even held the conference that officially established them. Then, they decided the dates of their meetings which brings us to now and the latest events (Raufah Hassan refers to the nomination of Sheikh al-Zindani as its president and Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar as its vice president on the 12th of August, 2008).
YO: -Why do you think this religious authority emerges now?
RH: -It is not happening now, it has been happening for a long time. These groups have been formulated in Yemen in the 70s, reformulated in the 80s, they have been formulated again in 1994, and now they appear again for the forth time, so the time is not a big issue. Every time they appear, they come with a new face: sometimes an association, sometimes they appear as part of a party, others like groups supported by officials and sometimes by the public. I have followed these events since a long time ago now, and the time does not really matter because now we are just experiencing another “wave” of the same phenomenon.
At least this time, in the beginning, it was aimed to create either a political party that is more extremist or to pressure on the Islah party to accept a certain agenda. The Islah party is now part of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) coalition and as such is now negotiating an agenda that is less radical than what it used to be, so the ones who felt excluded want now to show their power. There is a political agenda behind all that.
YO: -What would this “agenda” be and who are “they” when you talk about “their” reformulation over the years?
RH: -We do have 5000 people that met under the title of the “’ulama,” most of them were graduates from al-Eman University. The head of the University was announced to be the head of this group, the son of Sheikh al-Ahmar was announced to be its deputy: it is a formula that shows a tribal support and a religious coalition to bring about something that was present at the beginning of the formulation of al-Islah Party in the 90s (since its establishment as a political party, the Islah Party has been based on three political streams: the tribal stream led by Sheikh al-Ahmar and now led by his son, the Muslim Brotherhood group considered the intellectual and reformist stream, and the conservative group led by Sheikh al-Zindani).
Now we have a similar coalition, again these groups get together once more in the newly formulated virtue authority. Now, when I say “they” I refer to the ones that benefit from this kind of power and power meaning here authority, resources and influence. They announced –we are not going to talk on their behalf, but on what they announced- their agenda clearly: they spoke of the Sa’adah war, social movements, women and the movements in the South of the country. Their political agenda is clear.
YO: -What is your opinion in relation to women and the fatwa they issued against the quota system?
RH: -The virtue authority as a group did not issue this fatwa, it was distributed at their meeting by a group of radicals more radicals than the whole authority who used the opportunity of this conference to distribute that. It is an opinion that had existed for a long time and that now expressed itself in a stronger manner but it belongs to a group inside another group.
YO: - The quota system: is it an effective solution to women’s participation?
RH: -Well, the quota is just a mechanism to help women in the issue of political participation, but is not the final goal of the women’s movement. Getting women to the parliament successfully is not going to be done through a quota system, it has to be done through another system so is “okay” if people oppose this specific mechanism. Women and the men that support them have to work through other methods and mechanisms. The wording sometimes and the mechanisms some other times make issues bigger than what the reality is.
The reality is how to support women and make them present in the elected bodies. To do that many things can be done, so if the quota is refused then let’s do something else. I was in the Beijing Conference (in reference to the Fourth World Conference held in Beijing in 1995), and I joined the work on the agenda that came as an outcome and as a plan of action after this conference. In the plan of action Yemen signed, it was supposed to encourage women and their political participation, empower them through a quota of at least 30%.
Coming back to Yemen and presenting a quota of just 15% is a step, but just one step. Now, for me is not the end, is just another method and that is why I do not put emphasis on it because I consider it as another step. As such, it has been taken by the President, supported by some, rejected by others, but even this rejection made people talk about it, which is good on itself.
YO: -What is your stand about women’s organizations’ responses on the events provoked by the Virtue Authority?
RH: -Is good. In our Foundation (Cultural Development Programs Foundation is a non-governmental organization that aims at increasing the level of cultural awareness) we have not taken any steps, we are waiting for them to do more. I think they are going to do more for the coming election (Parliamentary election, programmed to be held on April 2009). That is why we have to be vigilant about it. The quota system was clear that, after the refusal of the modification of the election law, was not going to take place in this election; but because the modification of the constitution has not taken place, it is still a subject that is not over in Yemen.
The quota needs either an agreement from the political parties or a legal modification of laws in such a way that it does not go against the constitution or the modifications/amendments to the constitution. If that took place, then you could say the quota “is an issue,” but is not an issue, is out of questions, so why are you going to put all your efforts in something that is not workable? We have to work now for the 2009 election from the point of view that women have to win. We cannot do it through the quota because the quota is already gone, so instead of crying on the milk that has been spoiled let’s do something.
YO: -Like what?
RH: -Everybody can do something. For instance our Foundation is creating a network called Ansar that will support women candidates in eight governorates where women had won in previous local council elections but not in the parliament, so we will support them. We know that the legal system now makes it difficult for women to be independent candidates because they request 300 signatures. Our network will help women get the signatures they need and we will also help them to have an environment of support, we will help them in their campaigns through creating groups inside Ansar that will really vote for them. Is the social environment the one that needs to be changed, or improved, or enhanced and we will work for that to happen. Also we will support the groups that are doing a similar work.
YO: -Is Ansar similar to the Watan Alliance? (The Watan Alliance was a pioneer initiative among women activists to form an alliance that would support women socially and economically to be independent candidates during any election. This Alliance was created in 2006, during the past presidential and local council elections)
RH: -Yes, but we support not only independent candidates but also candidates from political parties. Our Foundation was actually the former secretary of the Watan Coalition, we helped them in their creation, but this coalition is loose and because of that is not structured which makes it incapable of producing programs. Now our network, Ansar, has strong ties, it is directed and supported by the Foundation who is responsible for it, so we are required to respond for their actions. Watan was a good coalition and there can be collaboration with the Ansar network, but the latter would be an executive body.
YO: -Regarding the upcoming election, how do you see the possibilities for the opposition coalition? Did the latest political events divide it?
RH: - The JMP is still the JMP, it has not announced to be divided or out of the election. The Virtue Authority is also there, and it has not announced to become a party. Islah is still a political party that has not announced to be divided. All these rumours of division are just rumours, so I do not deal with them as facts. It does not mean that much. When the parties will present candidates and when women will begin to face problems, then it will be the real exam for these groups.
YO: -What is your reading of the latest movements among the political actors?
RH: -If al-Zindani is to break the Islah Party only he can answer that, but even though, I personally doubt it. By reading the map of Yemen’s political tendencies, he seems to be making pressure, showing that if he does what he wants he can hurt, and if they exclude or put him aside, he is showing that he is going to react. It is a language, a code, between them. Do we decode it correctly, I am not sure.
YO: -What can you tell us about the events that took place in 1999 and that mentioned Antelak al-Mutawakeel in the previous interview, which targeted the Center for Gender Studies and you personally?
RH: -In 1999 Islah was not able to present a candidate for the election and they had to choose the President, which was the worse option for them, so they had to occupy their members with something bigger, a bigger danger like our center and myself, which they presented as a threat to Islam. In that way the members of the party would not think about the internal problems. I do not know if Islah has solved these problems because in the second presidential election they had to come with a candidate that came from outside their party and that was chosen by the JMP -Faisal Bin Shamlan- that could save the unity of the Islah party because Islah could not solve this internal problem.
Until today the Islah Party has not been able to produce a candidate in the name of Islah and defend him without having problems among the groups inside the party. Now, if they will be able to do so in the upcoming election, I do not know. I really wish for them that al-Zindani and his group make their own political party and leave Islah in peace, so they could really grow and could be strong and able to produce a good candidate, but this is just a wish.
- Yemen Observer
In this issue The Yemen Observer interviewed Raufah Hassan: an academic, a researcher and a social activist. Hassan is currently professor of Media Studies at the University of Sana’a, where she is also a research member at the Gender Studies Center. Head of the Cultural Development Programs Foundation, Raufah Hassan accomplished her studies in Egypt, the United States and France. As a professor, she has taught Mass Media and Social Change, Gender Studies, and Islamic feminism theories among other courses.
Yemen Observer (YO): -How do you explain the establishment of the VVC in Yemen?
Raufah Hassan (RH): -I followed all the acts done by this group from the very beginning, so I know about the first poster they held half a year ago, where they presented 13 issues they were against and they collected 91 signatures from what they called “Scientist Sheikhs of Islam,” the ‘ulama. I analysed this poster and I presented my analysis in a paper at a conference.
I then drew attention to our colleagues at the Women National Committee and the Yemen Women Union, who did not know anything about it yet. I was very much concerned because their points attacked the possibility of making any modification of the laws for or in favour of women, considering that to be against Islam. We discussed that and we decided that we would not make it a bigger issue than what it was, so we did not lead any actions. Then I followed through the news that this group of people met with the President so as to ask him to allow them to form their authority in an official manner. First, they wanted their authority to be related to the President, to be it governmental, but the President refused and politely said that he would think about it and never did anything.
Then, they decided to hold another meeting in which they announced that they would have the form of a non-governmental organization (NGO), and given the freedom we have in Yemen to make groups, they did it. In the beginning they were attacked by many journalists who considered them to be a replica of the Saudi “moral police.” There were so many articles defending and attacking them before they even held the conference that officially established them. Then, they decided the dates of their meetings which brings us to now and the latest events (Raufah Hassan refers to the nomination of Sheikh al-Zindani as its president and Sheikh Sadeq al-Ahmar as its vice president on the 12th of August, 2008).
YO: -Why do you think this religious authority emerges now?
RH: -It is not happening now, it has been happening for a long time. These groups have been formulated in Yemen in the 70s, reformulated in the 80s, they have been formulated again in 1994, and now they appear again for the forth time, so the time is not a big issue. Every time they appear, they come with a new face: sometimes an association, sometimes they appear as part of a party, others like groups supported by officials and sometimes by the public. I have followed these events since a long time ago now, and the time does not really matter because now we are just experiencing another “wave” of the same phenomenon.
At least this time, in the beginning, it was aimed to create either a political party that is more extremist or to pressure on the Islah party to accept a certain agenda. The Islah party is now part of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) coalition and as such is now negotiating an agenda that is less radical than what it used to be, so the ones who felt excluded want now to show their power. There is a political agenda behind all that.
YO: -What would this “agenda” be and who are “they” when you talk about “their” reformulation over the years?
RH: -We do have 5000 people that met under the title of the “’ulama,” most of them were graduates from al-Eman University. The head of the University was announced to be the head of this group, the son of Sheikh al-Ahmar was announced to be its deputy: it is a formula that shows a tribal support and a religious coalition to bring about something that was present at the beginning of the formulation of al-Islah Party in the 90s (since its establishment as a political party, the Islah Party has been based on three political streams: the tribal stream led by Sheikh al-Ahmar and now led by his son, the Muslim Brotherhood group considered the intellectual and reformist stream, and the conservative group led by Sheikh al-Zindani).
Now we have a similar coalition, again these groups get together once more in the newly formulated virtue authority. Now, when I say “they” I refer to the ones that benefit from this kind of power and power meaning here authority, resources and influence. They announced –we are not going to talk on their behalf, but on what they announced- their agenda clearly: they spoke of the Sa’adah war, social movements, women and the movements in the South of the country. Their political agenda is clear.
YO: -What is your opinion in relation to women and the fatwa they issued against the quota system?
RH: -The virtue authority as a group did not issue this fatwa, it was distributed at their meeting by a group of radicals more radicals than the whole authority who used the opportunity of this conference to distribute that. It is an opinion that had existed for a long time and that now expressed itself in a stronger manner but it belongs to a group inside another group.
YO: - The quota system: is it an effective solution to women’s participation?
RH: -Well, the quota is just a mechanism to help women in the issue of political participation, but is not the final goal of the women’s movement. Getting women to the parliament successfully is not going to be done through a quota system, it has to be done through another system so is “okay” if people oppose this specific mechanism. Women and the men that support them have to work through other methods and mechanisms. The wording sometimes and the mechanisms some other times make issues bigger than what the reality is.
The reality is how to support women and make them present in the elected bodies. To do that many things can be done, so if the quota is refused then let’s do something else. I was in the Beijing Conference (in reference to the Fourth World Conference held in Beijing in 1995), and I joined the work on the agenda that came as an outcome and as a plan of action after this conference. In the plan of action Yemen signed, it was supposed to encourage women and their political participation, empower them through a quota of at least 30%.
Coming back to Yemen and presenting a quota of just 15% is a step, but just one step. Now, for me is not the end, is just another method and that is why I do not put emphasis on it because I consider it as another step. As such, it has been taken by the President, supported by some, rejected by others, but even this rejection made people talk about it, which is good on itself.
YO: -What is your stand about women’s organizations’ responses on the events provoked by the Virtue Authority?
RH: -Is good. In our Foundation (Cultural Development Programs Foundation is a non-governmental organization that aims at increasing the level of cultural awareness) we have not taken any steps, we are waiting for them to do more. I think they are going to do more for the coming election (Parliamentary election, programmed to be held on April 2009). That is why we have to be vigilant about it. The quota system was clear that, after the refusal of the modification of the election law, was not going to take place in this election; but because the modification of the constitution has not taken place, it is still a subject that is not over in Yemen.
The quota needs either an agreement from the political parties or a legal modification of laws in such a way that it does not go against the constitution or the modifications/amendments to the constitution. If that took place, then you could say the quota “is an issue,” but is not an issue, is out of questions, so why are you going to put all your efforts in something that is not workable? We have to work now for the 2009 election from the point of view that women have to win. We cannot do it through the quota because the quota is already gone, so instead of crying on the milk that has been spoiled let’s do something.
YO: -Like what?
RH: -Everybody can do something. For instance our Foundation is creating a network called Ansar that will support women candidates in eight governorates where women had won in previous local council elections but not in the parliament, so we will support them. We know that the legal system now makes it difficult for women to be independent candidates because they request 300 signatures. Our network will help women get the signatures they need and we will also help them to have an environment of support, we will help them in their campaigns through creating groups inside Ansar that will really vote for them. Is the social environment the one that needs to be changed, or improved, or enhanced and we will work for that to happen. Also we will support the groups that are doing a similar work.
YO: -Is Ansar similar to the Watan Alliance? (The Watan Alliance was a pioneer initiative among women activists to form an alliance that would support women socially and economically to be independent candidates during any election. This Alliance was created in 2006, during the past presidential and local council elections)
RH: -Yes, but we support not only independent candidates but also candidates from political parties. Our Foundation was actually the former secretary of the Watan Coalition, we helped them in their creation, but this coalition is loose and because of that is not structured which makes it incapable of producing programs. Now our network, Ansar, has strong ties, it is directed and supported by the Foundation who is responsible for it, so we are required to respond for their actions. Watan was a good coalition and there can be collaboration with the Ansar network, but the latter would be an executive body.
YO: -Regarding the upcoming election, how do you see the possibilities for the opposition coalition? Did the latest political events divide it?
RH: - The JMP is still the JMP, it has not announced to be divided or out of the election. The Virtue Authority is also there, and it has not announced to become a party. Islah is still a political party that has not announced to be divided. All these rumours of division are just rumours, so I do not deal with them as facts. It does not mean that much. When the parties will present candidates and when women will begin to face problems, then it will be the real exam for these groups.
YO: -What is your reading of the latest movements among the political actors?
RH: -If al-Zindani is to break the Islah Party only he can answer that, but even though, I personally doubt it. By reading the map of Yemen’s political tendencies, he seems to be making pressure, showing that if he does what he wants he can hurt, and if they exclude or put him aside, he is showing that he is going to react. It is a language, a code, between them. Do we decode it correctly, I am not sure.
YO: -What can you tell us about the events that took place in 1999 and that mentioned Antelak al-Mutawakeel in the previous interview, which targeted the Center for Gender Studies and you personally?
RH: -In 1999 Islah was not able to present a candidate for the election and they had to choose the President, which was the worse option for them, so they had to occupy their members with something bigger, a bigger danger like our center and myself, which they presented as a threat to Islam. In that way the members of the party would not think about the internal problems. I do not know if Islah has solved these problems because in the second presidential election they had to come with a candidate that came from outside their party and that was chosen by the JMP -Faisal Bin Shamlan- that could save the unity of the Islah party because Islah could not solve this internal problem.
Until today the Islah Party has not been able to produce a candidate in the name of Islah and defend him without having problems among the groups inside the party. Now, if they will be able to do so in the upcoming election, I do not know. I really wish for them that al-Zindani and his group make their own political party and leave Islah in peace, so they could really grow and could be strong and able to produce a good candidate, but this is just a wish.
- Yemen Observer
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Yemen: Women respond to the Vice and Virtue Committee-( Part IV )
Following the creation of the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC) on July 15th and in response to the fatwa issued by this authority against a system that would allocate 15 percent of the electoral bodies’ seats to women (women’s quota), several female political activists, members of non-governmental organizations, journalists and researchers have reacted and made public their opinion regarding these events. This is the forth of a series of interviews published by The Yemen Observer that aim to reflect the debate generated among some of these women, who are analysing the meanings of the VVC, the situation of women’s political participation in Yemen, and their responses to the obstacles they find.
In this occasion we interviewed Antelak al-Mutawakeel, an academic and a civil society activist, whose focus of research and work are on youth in Yemen, education and gender.
Antelak al-Mutawakeel, professor at the University of Sana’a and head of the Girls World Communication Center.
She graduated from the literature program in the English Department of the University of Sana’a, where she currently teaches. Al-Mutawakeel completed her doctoral program in Holland thanks to the ‘gender scholarship’ through the Dutch embassy that was aimed at helping women to study and have a family at the same time. In 1998 while she was still studying, she started to develop the idea of what later on would become the Girls World Communication Center (GWCC), a non-governmental organization that works towards increasing youth participation in social, political and economic aspects of society.
Yemen Observer (YO)- What can you tell us about the Vice and Virtue Committee?
Antelak al-Mutawakeel (AAM): -It is certainly a very recent issue which shocked us all. I first heard about the VVC through the news and then I started to connect what people had been saying about groups acting in defense of virtue in cities like Hodeidah. The VVC is really not a clear organization or a clear issue at all. What exactly are their principles? I believe what they are doing is not clear.
Are they going to fight corruption at the political level? If they would do so, they would actually do something good. Personally, I am not against “virtue,” this is something we all agree with, but what we all need to understand better is what is this Virtue Authority? Who are they? What do they really stand for? Are they official or not? None of this is clear. Even the government’s approach to the VVC has been ambiguous: at the beginning the VVC had the blessing from the government but lately we started to read in many newspapers that the government and the president attacked them.
I just read a couple of days ago that al-Eryani declared that the government is not with the VVC while not too long ago the President was allowing them to celebrate their first conference. We, citizens, do not know what VVC is and what their plans are for the future. We all are against vice and with virtue, but we need to understand what this VVC is and who and what are they going to fight, otherwise it can be very misleading.
YO: - Why do you think the VVC emerges now, at this precise political moment?
AAM: - Because they are clearly a political organization, although who is really behind it is not clear. This can be explained by the simple fact that they emerged all of a sudden. They are not a civil society organization built with time and out of social work. At the same time this organization seems to follow the Saudi model (The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which is financed and supported by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and commonly referred to as the “religious police” of that country).
Saudi Arabia is now realizing that it needs to get rid of this model, so why would we copy a model that proved to be a failure? If we are to fight vice we should start with poverty and corruption. We should look at those problems that affect the entire society and not each person at the individual and private level. In any case, what is true is that every time we have upcoming elections this kind of thing happens so as to deviate the attention from the real problems. For instance, in the 1999 presidential elections the Women’s Studies Center (University of Sana’a) was attacked and “gender” became a big issue.
They created a big discussion about whether or not “gender” was an appropriate term. Now gender is accepted everywhere and the Center included the term in its name, becoming a Gender Studies Center. Women or gender and religion are hot issues; especially religion is a sensitive issue that affects everyone, educated and non-educated people alike. It is very easy to use religion or the ideas of virtue and vice to divert the attention from other issues, because anyone can connect with them and doing so before the elections is a clear political movement. There are political reasons behind the VVC and for example, when they focus on prostitution, we should first look at the reasons behind it because prostitution is an outcome of poverty, and poverty and corruption are more important problems. In addition to this, we already have laws against prostitution or alcohol; we just need the laws to work and not a Virtue Authority going after individuals.
YO: -What is your opinion about the fatwa they issued against a quota system to allocate seats to women in electoral bodies?
AAM: - The only thing I can do is laugh at it. Really, to say that the quota is haram (forbidden in Islam) just makes me laugh. When I heard about it I thought to myself ‘this cannot be said by scholars!’ The dangerous thing is that they play with the fact that everyone will engage with this because the scholars signed it. But even this issue is again not clear, some people say the fatwa is valid, some others say is not. The whole issue is vague and made to be vague in purpose. Making things vague, making people engage in conflict with each other, making the newspapers talk about it, is all aimed at diverting the attention from the real problems. That is why I think we should not focus on the VVC.
I will not fight against them, is not worth it, and I will just continue doing my work. A political agreement created the VVC, but once everything is calmed nothing will happen, it will be like with the word “gender” which now is no longer a problem and everyone uses it, even in small villages. Now they are using religion for political purposes and that is not Islam. They are limiting Islam to what it is not, limiting us, whereas Islam is about understanding and doing intellectual work to understand things around us.
YO: - Many women’s organizations have reacted against this authority and against the fatwa, do you agree with their actions?
AAM: - I have not really discussed this with other women from these organizations so I cannot really say much about it. In any case, I think women should not busy themselves with this issue and we should not make it bigger than what it actually is. This is just a game, a political game that the President supports one day and attacks the afterwards.
YO:- The government first gave the green light to the VVC and now it critiques it, it first enabled them to exist but then the VVC issued a fatwa against the quota that is part of the government’s program, what is your interpretation of these events?
AAM: - Maybe the government does not want this quota system to pass as a law. The government has been promising women so many things, it promised the quota but this promise never became real, neither with the government nor with the opposition. Now with the VVC issuing this fatwa against the quota system, the government can say that is not because of them and thus put the responsibility on someone else’s shoulders. They always use women for political purposes and I just wish they would use something different because playing with women or religion is very dangerous. Look at what happened in Sa’adah, with a war that lasted some five years. I hope politicians start choosing carefully what they use in their campaigns from now on, because using women can provoke violence against women as well.
YO: - What is your point of view regarding the quota system?
AAM: -I think it can be useful but only for a short or limited period of time. Also it needs to be accompanied by other empowerment tools. Women can already compete with men, but what is necessary is an authority will for this to become real. Our society is ready for this and for a lot more, no one says ‘no’ when a woman gets elected, the problem is not the society. Yemen has a society that praises its queens more than any king (in reference to the queens Arwa and Bilquis).
We are proud of having a history of powerful women and there are no problems with the society accepting women in power. When you look at who says ‘no’ to women in power the answer is the authority, the government. If they change, everything could change. So many civil society organizations are led by women and there has never been any social or cultural opposition to this, why then these women are not in the government? The government until now has not done any serious work to let women occupy higher positions. A quota could be good for this, but it can not be a system that lasts forever. I would never want to have a post of power because I am a woman; I want to have it because I am a person that deserves it, that is qualified for it. Usually the society is blamed for this but in the end, society or culture is just used as scapegoats, the real problem lies within the people in power.
- Yemen Observer
In this occasion we interviewed Antelak al-Mutawakeel, an academic and a civil society activist, whose focus of research and work are on youth in Yemen, education and gender.
Antelak al-Mutawakeel, professor at the University of Sana’a and head of the Girls World Communication Center.
She graduated from the literature program in the English Department of the University of Sana’a, where she currently teaches. Al-Mutawakeel completed her doctoral program in Holland thanks to the ‘gender scholarship’ through the Dutch embassy that was aimed at helping women to study and have a family at the same time. In 1998 while she was still studying, she started to develop the idea of what later on would become the Girls World Communication Center (GWCC), a non-governmental organization that works towards increasing youth participation in social, political and economic aspects of society.
Yemen Observer (YO)- What can you tell us about the Vice and Virtue Committee?
Antelak al-Mutawakeel (AAM): -It is certainly a very recent issue which shocked us all. I first heard about the VVC through the news and then I started to connect what people had been saying about groups acting in defense of virtue in cities like Hodeidah. The VVC is really not a clear organization or a clear issue at all. What exactly are their principles? I believe what they are doing is not clear.
Are they going to fight corruption at the political level? If they would do so, they would actually do something good. Personally, I am not against “virtue,” this is something we all agree with, but what we all need to understand better is what is this Virtue Authority? Who are they? What do they really stand for? Are they official or not? None of this is clear. Even the government’s approach to the VVC has been ambiguous: at the beginning the VVC had the blessing from the government but lately we started to read in many newspapers that the government and the president attacked them.
I just read a couple of days ago that al-Eryani declared that the government is not with the VVC while not too long ago the President was allowing them to celebrate their first conference. We, citizens, do not know what VVC is and what their plans are for the future. We all are against vice and with virtue, but we need to understand what this VVC is and who and what are they going to fight, otherwise it can be very misleading.
YO: - Why do you think the VVC emerges now, at this precise political moment?
AAM: - Because they are clearly a political organization, although who is really behind it is not clear. This can be explained by the simple fact that they emerged all of a sudden. They are not a civil society organization built with time and out of social work. At the same time this organization seems to follow the Saudi model (The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which is financed and supported by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and commonly referred to as the “religious police” of that country).
Saudi Arabia is now realizing that it needs to get rid of this model, so why would we copy a model that proved to be a failure? If we are to fight vice we should start with poverty and corruption. We should look at those problems that affect the entire society and not each person at the individual and private level. In any case, what is true is that every time we have upcoming elections this kind of thing happens so as to deviate the attention from the real problems. For instance, in the 1999 presidential elections the Women’s Studies Center (University of Sana’a) was attacked and “gender” became a big issue.
They created a big discussion about whether or not “gender” was an appropriate term. Now gender is accepted everywhere and the Center included the term in its name, becoming a Gender Studies Center. Women or gender and religion are hot issues; especially religion is a sensitive issue that affects everyone, educated and non-educated people alike. It is very easy to use religion or the ideas of virtue and vice to divert the attention from other issues, because anyone can connect with them and doing so before the elections is a clear political movement. There are political reasons behind the VVC and for example, when they focus on prostitution, we should first look at the reasons behind it because prostitution is an outcome of poverty, and poverty and corruption are more important problems. In addition to this, we already have laws against prostitution or alcohol; we just need the laws to work and not a Virtue Authority going after individuals.
YO: -What is your opinion about the fatwa they issued against a quota system to allocate seats to women in electoral bodies?
AAM: - The only thing I can do is laugh at it. Really, to say that the quota is haram (forbidden in Islam) just makes me laugh. When I heard about it I thought to myself ‘this cannot be said by scholars!’ The dangerous thing is that they play with the fact that everyone will engage with this because the scholars signed it. But even this issue is again not clear, some people say the fatwa is valid, some others say is not. The whole issue is vague and made to be vague in purpose. Making things vague, making people engage in conflict with each other, making the newspapers talk about it, is all aimed at diverting the attention from the real problems. That is why I think we should not focus on the VVC.
I will not fight against them, is not worth it, and I will just continue doing my work. A political agreement created the VVC, but once everything is calmed nothing will happen, it will be like with the word “gender” which now is no longer a problem and everyone uses it, even in small villages. Now they are using religion for political purposes and that is not Islam. They are limiting Islam to what it is not, limiting us, whereas Islam is about understanding and doing intellectual work to understand things around us.
YO: - Many women’s organizations have reacted against this authority and against the fatwa, do you agree with their actions?
AAM: - I have not really discussed this with other women from these organizations so I cannot really say much about it. In any case, I think women should not busy themselves with this issue and we should not make it bigger than what it actually is. This is just a game, a political game that the President supports one day and attacks the afterwards.
YO:- The government first gave the green light to the VVC and now it critiques it, it first enabled them to exist but then the VVC issued a fatwa against the quota that is part of the government’s program, what is your interpretation of these events?
AAM: - Maybe the government does not want this quota system to pass as a law. The government has been promising women so many things, it promised the quota but this promise never became real, neither with the government nor with the opposition. Now with the VVC issuing this fatwa against the quota system, the government can say that is not because of them and thus put the responsibility on someone else’s shoulders. They always use women for political purposes and I just wish they would use something different because playing with women or religion is very dangerous. Look at what happened in Sa’adah, with a war that lasted some five years. I hope politicians start choosing carefully what they use in their campaigns from now on, because using women can provoke violence against women as well.
YO: - What is your point of view regarding the quota system?
AAM: -I think it can be useful but only for a short or limited period of time. Also it needs to be accompanied by other empowerment tools. Women can already compete with men, but what is necessary is an authority will for this to become real. Our society is ready for this and for a lot more, no one says ‘no’ when a woman gets elected, the problem is not the society. Yemen has a society that praises its queens more than any king (in reference to the queens Arwa and Bilquis).
We are proud of having a history of powerful women and there are no problems with the society accepting women in power. When you look at who says ‘no’ to women in power the answer is the authority, the government. If they change, everything could change. So many civil society organizations are led by women and there has never been any social or cultural opposition to this, why then these women are not in the government? The government until now has not done any serious work to let women occupy higher positions. A quota could be good for this, but it can not be a system that lasts forever. I would never want to have a post of power because I am a woman; I want to have it because I am a person that deserves it, that is qualified for it. Usually the society is blamed for this but in the end, society or culture is just used as scapegoats, the real problem lies within the people in power.
- Yemen Observer
Friday, September 19, 2008
Saudi Arabia: Women Find an Unlikely Role Model: Oprah
By KATHERINE ZOEPF
New York Times
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.
A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.
Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.
“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”
Nayla is not the only Saudi woman to feel a special connection to the American media mogul. When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.
In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.
Some women here say Ms. Winfrey’s assurances to her viewers — that no matter how restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control in small ways and create lives of value — help them find meaning in their cramped, veiled existence.
“Oprah dresses conservatively,” explained Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, a co-owner of a women’s spa in Riyadh called Yibreen and a daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. “She struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from poverty and from abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize her here.”
Today, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” with Arabic subtitles, is broadcast twice each weekday on MBC4, a three-year-old channel developed by the MBC Group with the Arab woman in mind. The show’s guests, self-improvement tips, and advice on family relationships — as well as Ms. Winfrey’s clothes and changing hairstyles — are eagerly analyzed by Saudi women from a wide range of social backgrounds and income levels.
The largest-circulation Saudi women’s magazine, Sayidaty, devotes a regular page to Ms. Winfrey, and dog-eared copies of her official magazine, O, which is not sold in the kingdom, are passed around by women who collect them during trips abroad.
The particulars of Ms. Winfrey’s personal story have resonated with a broad audience of Saudi women in a way that few other Western imports have, explained Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC Group.
Saudi Arabia was an impoverished desert country before it was transformed by oil money and, in just a couple of generations, into a wealthy consumer society. Saudi women readily identify with “this glamorous woman from very modest beginnings,” Mr. Hayek said, in a phone interview from Dubai.
Maha al-Faleh, 23, of Riyadh, said, “Oprah talks about issues that haven’t really been spoken about here openly before.
“She talks about racism, for example,” she said. “This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we’re judged for the way we veil or for our skin color. I have a friend whose driver touched her in an inappropriate way. She was very young at the time, but she felt very guilty about it — and Oprah helped her to speak about this abuse with her mother.”
MBC edits some “Oprah” episodes to remove content banned by censors in the region, officials at the channel say. It does not broadcast segments on homosexuality, for example. But the officials say they make most episodes available to their regional viewers uncensored, including some about relations between Arabs and Westerners and about living with the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Saudi women say they are drawn to Ms. Winfrey not only because she openly addresses subjects considered taboo locally, but also because she speaks of self-empowerment and change.
Wafa Muhammad, 38, a mother of five from Riyadh, said she believed that, in their adoration of Ms. Winfrey, Saudi women are expressing a hesitant sense of longing for real change in their country.
“Many of us feel that the solutions for our problems have to come from outside,” Ms. Muhammad said. When President Bush visited Saudi Arabia in January, she continued, as an example, his presence briefly became a locus of hope for Saudi women. “A lot of women were saying that they wished they could talk to Bush about problems like forced marriage, about how our children are taken away if our husbands divorce us.”
In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”
Nayla, the homemaker in Dammam, a Persian Gulf port city, says Ms. Winfrey helps her cope with a society that does not encourage her to have interests. “The life of a woman here in Saudi — it makes you tired and it makes you boring,” she said, sighing.
Like many Saudi women, Nayla struggles with obesity, a major issue in the kingdom because many women are largely confined to their homes and local custom often prevents them from participating in sports or even walking around their neighborhoods.
She says that Ms. Winfrey has inspired her to lose weight and to pursue her education through an online degree course, a method acceptable to her husband since she will not have to leave home.
As she spoke, Nayla sat on the floor of the women’s sitting room of her mother-in-law’s house. A battered wooden bureau, its top littered with hairbrushes, plastic figurines, and perfume bottles, was the only piece of furniture.
Several female relatives sat with Nayla, and the door was kept slightly ajar so that their small children, chasing one another in the hall outside, could enter. But at the sound of heavier, male footfalls approaching, the women all jumped to their feet and scurried to hide their faces behind the bureau. It would be shameful if a brother-in-law accidentally caught a glimpse of their uncovered faces, Nayla explained.
“Oprah is the magic word for women here who want to scream out loud, who want to be heard,” Ms. Muhammad said. “Look at what happened to the girl from Qatif,” she said, referring to the infamous case of a young woman who was gang-raped, then sentenced to flogging because she had been in a car with an unrelated man.
The young woman from Qatif received a royal pardon last year after her case became an international media cause célèbre.
“The Qatif girl was heard outside the country, and she was helped,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But we need to have Saudi women who help women here. We need to have women social workers, women judges.”
“We have a very male-dominated society, and it’s very hard sometimes,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But for now I have my coffee, and sit, and I watch Oprah. It’s my favorite time of day.”
New York Times
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia—Once a month, Nayla says, she writes a letter to Oprah Winfrey.
A young Saudi homemaker who covers her face in public might not seem to have much in common with an American talk show host whose image is known to millions. Like many women in this conservative desert kingdom, Nayla does not usually socialize with people outside her extended family, and she never leaves her house unless chaperoned by her husband.
Ms. Winfrey has not answered the letters. But Nayla says she is still hoping.
“I feel that Oprah truly understands me,” said Nayla, who, like many of the women interviewed, would not let her full name be used. “She gives me energy and hope for my life. Sometimes I think that she is the only person in the world who knows how I feel.”
Nayla is not the only Saudi woman to feel a special connection to the American media mogul. When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.
In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.
Some women here say Ms. Winfrey’s assurances to her viewers — that no matter how restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control in small ways and create lives of value — help them find meaning in their cramped, veiled existence.
“Oprah dresses conservatively,” explained Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, a co-owner of a women’s spa in Riyadh called Yibreen and a daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States. “She struggles with her weight. She overcame depression. She rose from poverty and from abuse. On all these levels she appeals to a Saudi woman. People really idolize her here.”
Today, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” with Arabic subtitles, is broadcast twice each weekday on MBC4, a three-year-old channel developed by the MBC Group with the Arab woman in mind. The show’s guests, self-improvement tips, and advice on family relationships — as well as Ms. Winfrey’s clothes and changing hairstyles — are eagerly analyzed by Saudi women from a wide range of social backgrounds and income levels.
The largest-circulation Saudi women’s magazine, Sayidaty, devotes a regular page to Ms. Winfrey, and dog-eared copies of her official magazine, O, which is not sold in the kingdom, are passed around by women who collect them during trips abroad.
The particulars of Ms. Winfrey’s personal story have resonated with a broad audience of Saudi women in a way that few other Western imports have, explained Mazen Hayek, a spokesman for the MBC Group.
Saudi Arabia was an impoverished desert country before it was transformed by oil money and, in just a couple of generations, into a wealthy consumer society. Saudi women readily identify with “this glamorous woman from very modest beginnings,” Mr. Hayek said, in a phone interview from Dubai.
Maha al-Faleh, 23, of Riyadh, said, “Oprah talks about issues that haven’t really been spoken about here openly before.
“She talks about racism, for example,” she said. “This is something that Saudis are very concerned about, because many of us feel that we’re judged for the way we veil or for our skin color. I have a friend whose driver touched her in an inappropriate way. She was very young at the time, but she felt very guilty about it — and Oprah helped her to speak about this abuse with her mother.”
MBC edits some “Oprah” episodes to remove content banned by censors in the region, officials at the channel say. It does not broadcast segments on homosexuality, for example. But the officials say they make most episodes available to their regional viewers uncensored, including some about relations between Arabs and Westerners and about living with the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Saudi women say they are drawn to Ms. Winfrey not only because she openly addresses subjects considered taboo locally, but also because she speaks of self-empowerment and change.
Wafa Muhammad, 38, a mother of five from Riyadh, said she believed that, in their adoration of Ms. Winfrey, Saudi women are expressing a hesitant sense of longing for real change in their country.
“Many of us feel that the solutions for our problems have to come from outside,” Ms. Muhammad said. When President Bush visited Saudi Arabia in January, she continued, as an example, his presence briefly became a locus of hope for Saudi women. “A lot of women were saying that they wished they could talk to Bush about problems like forced marriage, about how our children are taken away if our husbands divorce us.”
In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”
Nayla, the homemaker in Dammam, a Persian Gulf port city, says Ms. Winfrey helps her cope with a society that does not encourage her to have interests. “The life of a woman here in Saudi — it makes you tired and it makes you boring,” she said, sighing.
Like many Saudi women, Nayla struggles with obesity, a major issue in the kingdom because many women are largely confined to their homes and local custom often prevents them from participating in sports or even walking around their neighborhoods.
She says that Ms. Winfrey has inspired her to lose weight and to pursue her education through an online degree course, a method acceptable to her husband since she will not have to leave home.
As she spoke, Nayla sat on the floor of the women’s sitting room of her mother-in-law’s house. A battered wooden bureau, its top littered with hairbrushes, plastic figurines, and perfume bottles, was the only piece of furniture.
Several female relatives sat with Nayla, and the door was kept slightly ajar so that their small children, chasing one another in the hall outside, could enter. But at the sound of heavier, male footfalls approaching, the women all jumped to their feet and scurried to hide their faces behind the bureau. It would be shameful if a brother-in-law accidentally caught a glimpse of their uncovered faces, Nayla explained.
“Oprah is the magic word for women here who want to scream out loud, who want to be heard,” Ms. Muhammad said. “Look at what happened to the girl from Qatif,” she said, referring to the infamous case of a young woman who was gang-raped, then sentenced to flogging because she had been in a car with an unrelated man.
The young woman from Qatif received a royal pardon last year after her case became an international media cause célèbre.
“The Qatif girl was heard outside the country, and she was helped,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But we need to have Saudi women who help women here. We need to have women social workers, women judges.”
“We have a very male-dominated society, and it’s very hard sometimes,” Ms. Muhammad said. “But for now I have my coffee, and sit, and I watch Oprah. It’s my favorite time of day.”
Monday, September 15, 2008
BAHRAIN: NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING HOLDS ITS FIRST MEETING
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING HELD ITS FIRST MEETING TODAY UNDER THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF FOREIGN MINISTRY ASSISTANT UNDERSECRETARY FOR COORDINATION AND FOLLOW-UP SHAIKH ABDULAZIZ BIN MUBARAK AL KHALIFA AND IN THE PRESENCE OF THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS REPRESENTING FOREIGN, INTERIOR, JUSTICE AND ISLAMIC AFFAIRS, INFORMATION AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT MINISTRIES AS WELL AS REPRESENTATIVES OF BAHRAIN HUMAN RIGHTS SOCIETY, BAHRAIN YOUNG LADIES ASSOCIATION AND THE MIGRANT WORKER PROTECTION SOCIETY (MWPS).
SHAIKH ABDULAZIZ WELCOMED THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND CONVEYED TO THEM THE GREETINGS OF FOREIGN MINISTER SHAIKH KHALID BIN AHMED BIN MOHAMMED AL KHALIFA AND HIS BEST WISHES FOR THE COMMITTEE TO SUCCEED IN ACHIEVING ITS GOALS.
HE ALSO STRESSED THE NEED FOR THE COMMITTEE TO PLAY AN ACTIVE ROLE IN THE UPCOMING CONFERENCE WHICH WILL BE HELD IN BAHRAIN ON NOVEMBER 16 AND 17.
SHAIKH ABDULAZIZ CALLED UPON ALL CONCERNED SIDES TO POSITIVELY COOPERATE WITH THE COMMITTEE POINTING OUT THAT A WORK TEAM HAD BEEN FORMED TO LOOK INTO THE PHENOMENON OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
-- BNA
SHAIKH ABDULAZIZ WELCOMED THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND CONVEYED TO THEM THE GREETINGS OF FOREIGN MINISTER SHAIKH KHALID BIN AHMED BIN MOHAMMED AL KHALIFA AND HIS BEST WISHES FOR THE COMMITTEE TO SUCCEED IN ACHIEVING ITS GOALS.
HE ALSO STRESSED THE NEED FOR THE COMMITTEE TO PLAY AN ACTIVE ROLE IN THE UPCOMING CONFERENCE WHICH WILL BE HELD IN BAHRAIN ON NOVEMBER 16 AND 17.
SHAIKH ABDULAZIZ CALLED UPON ALL CONCERNED SIDES TO POSITIVELY COOPERATE WITH THE COMMITTEE POINTING OUT THAT A WORK TEAM HAD BEEN FORMED TO LOOK INTO THE PHENOMENON OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING.
-- BNA
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Yemen: Women respond to the Vice and Virtue Committee-( Part III )
Following the creation of the Vice and Virtue Committee in July 15th and in response to the fatwa issued by this authority against a system that would allocate 15 percent of the electoral bodies’ seats to women (women’s quota), several female political activists, members of non-governmental organizations, journalists and researchers have reacted and made public their opinion regarding these events.
This is the third of a series of interviews published by The Yemen Observer that aim to reflect the debate generated among some of these women, who are analysing the meanings of the VVC, the situation of women’s political participation in Yemen, and their responses to the obstacles they find. In this issue the Yemen Observer interviewed Tawkkol A. Karman, member of the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Assembly) at the Islamist party Islah and chairwoman of Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), a non-governmental organization that works towards the promotion of freedom of speech and press.
Mother of three children, she studied Business Administration and has been a journalist for the past 11 years. Her father, one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen, was Minister of Legal Affairs. A year ago she was among the several people that weekly, held sit-ins in front of the Yemeni Cabinet protesting against the banning of certain newspapers, the monopole of TV and radio stations by the government, the attack directed against journalists critical with the government, and in general, defending the right of expression. After 25 sit-ins they got 19 newspapers’ licences back.
Yemen Observer (YO): - When was the first time you heard about the Virtue Authority?
Tawkkol A. Karman (TAK): - This authority is a new authority, it just came to existence after a conference the ‘ulama held in July, but before that they did not exist. They came to existence after they met with the president, who allowed them to hold their conferences, so this authority is something coming from the presidential office.
In my opinion is not necessary, not even relevant, to talk about this authority anymore because is already dead. They held a conference or two, they announced their program, journalists refused it and opposed it, some of the ‘ulama did too, and that is as far as they got. They said they would gather once a year (the Vice Authority had previously proposed the establishment of permanent committees which would monitor vice-related activities of individuals and institutions, which the government rejected. In July they announced that they would hold annual meetings) so I consider them as another non-governmental organization (NGO).
YO: - What do you think about the fatwa they issued against women’s political participation and the quota system?
TAK: -I think this issue has become disproportionate in size. First of all, the booklet containing the fatwa does not make any sense, is as if it was written thousands of years ago. The second is that there are so many, too many fatwas that contradict that one fatwa and I do not understand why journalists and women’s organizations have focused that much on this one fatwa issued by the Virtue Authority.
I do not understand why no one speaks about the other fatwas, they only listened to what al-Zindani had to say but they should read other fatwas and speak about what other members of the ‘ulama think and not only of al-Zindani. Many ‘ulama support women’s right to become president if they want to, but now al-Zindani speaks and everyone gets upset, but he is just one person, one opinion. He has the right to express whatever he wants, is his own right of expression, but in the end we are the ones making out of his words and acts something bigger.
I think women’s organizations that denounced so much the fatwa and the Virtue Authority were wrong when they shouted about it. This authority became bigger because these denunciations made it bigger, but their fatwa does not make sense, is one among many others, and they are just another NGO.
YO: - But the Virtue Authority attacked women’s political participation and given that we are so close to the next parliamentary elections…
TAK: - Women’s political participation is a right we have by the Constitution, by law (Women –and man- can vote and be elected members of political institutions since 1960, when the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) was established in the North. In the South, women obtained these and many other rights after the independence from the British colony and the formation of a Marxist-Leninist Republic, the People’s Democratic Republic Of Yemen (PDRY) in 1967.
The PDRY promoted women’s education, declared equality between genders, and offered an appropriate legal environment to assure these rights. For instance, the 1974 Family Code was considered one of the most advanced pieces of legislation in the entire region in relation to the rights it provided to women in terms of marriage, divorce and children’s custody. This code was made null after the unification of North and South in 1990, provoking a deep impact on the life of southerner women).
A fatwa, any fatwa, cannot affect or change these rights. The problem is instead related to a political decision regarding women’s participation: the problem is not the fatwa, is the political decision of the people in power that do not give a real possibility for women to participate. The Constitution, in its article number 2, says that Islam is the religion of this country and that women and men are to be treated equally. The right to participate, we already have it. Now the problem is how to practice what is written in the Constitution, which is another thing. A social explanation would make clear this obstacle, but this social problem has nothing to do with the fatwa.
If the fatwa would be a real problem, a real obstacle, then the State would have to go and make women like Amata al-Razak, (Minister of Social Affairs and Works) leave the Parliament if this was against our religion, which is not the case. I know this fatwa can be dangerous, but is just one fatwa. I know that what al-Zindani says can threaten women’s efforts, but again, this is just one person. We should also speak about other ‘ulama, like Muhammad Saif al-’Udaini, who also speaks about women’s participation explaining women’s rights in Islam. And this is just one example, there are many other opinions to be heard that support women. Al-Zindani is just one voice.
YO: -Why do you think this phenomenon is happening now?
TAK: -For two reasons: one is that the ruling party allowed them to exist as a way to attack the Islah party, which is the main opposition party, but the Virtue Authority is not part of Islah and Islah rejected this authority with a press release from the very beginning, and so did the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), the opposition coalition Islah is part of. The second reason is that Saudi Arabia supports this authority and also the Shi’a in Yemen. When the president knew about this, he stopped the Virtue Authority (By the end of August the president declared his rejection and refusal of religious people becoming moral police in Yemen following the model of Saudi Arabia, al-Shar’a newspaper, 30 August, 2008). Now, have you heard anything else about the authority? Nothing, right? It just lasted for one month, just one.
YO:- What is your opinion about a quota system for women?
TAK: - I refuse the quota but not for the reasons the Virtue Authority said. I have other reasons. First, I consider that women have the capacity to access power on their own, the quota is not giving any right to women because women already have this right to participate. Second, the quota is like a gift from men to women, is not something obtained through merit. It is even worse than a gift, because is given as the last thing you can give. A third reason is that the quota system puts women in a lower position in relation to men, it stresses that they are not equal and that they are weak and not capable of being candidates on their own.
The quota defines women’s participation through women’s gender, and not because of their work (That the quota system hinders women’s participation is an idea widely extended and which departs from the fact that the quota, in this view, is against the principle of equal opportunity, is based on gender and not on ideas, merit or party platforms, is undemocratic and makes election processes be based on gender).I think there are other solutions in order to improve women’s participation in electoral bodies besides the quota system. Changing the party’s law and the election law, stating that no party can run for elections without voting women among their candidates are better solutions. If women are in the parties’ lists, in all the parties and not just in some, women would have the chance to be candidates and would prove themselves towards that.
YO: - Is Islah going to nominate women candidates for the 2009 parliamentary elections?
TAK: - Yes, but the Islah party cannot do this without the law being changed. The election law and the party’s law need to establish the same basis for all parties. In any case, women’s participation when it comes to Islah, is the largest in Yemen (a recent report published by the Women National Committee showed that about 6 women versus 10 men participate in the higher positions of the Islah party, the largest Islamist opposition party in Yemen. The Islah party was placed as the first in terms of women’s participation in Yemen). For instance, in the Majlis al-Shura, which I am a member of, we are 13 women out of 130 men, about 20% are women. This is the reality, and not an authority that is definitely dead.
- Yemen Observer
This is the third of a series of interviews published by The Yemen Observer that aim to reflect the debate generated among some of these women, who are analysing the meanings of the VVC, the situation of women’s political participation in Yemen, and their responses to the obstacles they find. In this issue the Yemen Observer interviewed Tawkkol A. Karman, member of the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Assembly) at the Islamist party Islah and chairwoman of Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), a non-governmental organization that works towards the promotion of freedom of speech and press.
Mother of three children, she studied Business Administration and has been a journalist for the past 11 years. Her father, one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen, was Minister of Legal Affairs. A year ago she was among the several people that weekly, held sit-ins in front of the Yemeni Cabinet protesting against the banning of certain newspapers, the monopole of TV and radio stations by the government, the attack directed against journalists critical with the government, and in general, defending the right of expression. After 25 sit-ins they got 19 newspapers’ licences back.
Yemen Observer (YO): - When was the first time you heard about the Virtue Authority?
Tawkkol A. Karman (TAK): - This authority is a new authority, it just came to existence after a conference the ‘ulama held in July, but before that they did not exist. They came to existence after they met with the president, who allowed them to hold their conferences, so this authority is something coming from the presidential office.
In my opinion is not necessary, not even relevant, to talk about this authority anymore because is already dead. They held a conference or two, they announced their program, journalists refused it and opposed it, some of the ‘ulama did too, and that is as far as they got. They said they would gather once a year (the Vice Authority had previously proposed the establishment of permanent committees which would monitor vice-related activities of individuals and institutions, which the government rejected. In July they announced that they would hold annual meetings) so I consider them as another non-governmental organization (NGO).
YO: - What do you think about the fatwa they issued against women’s political participation and the quota system?
TAK: -I think this issue has become disproportionate in size. First of all, the booklet containing the fatwa does not make any sense, is as if it was written thousands of years ago. The second is that there are so many, too many fatwas that contradict that one fatwa and I do not understand why journalists and women’s organizations have focused that much on this one fatwa issued by the Virtue Authority.
I do not understand why no one speaks about the other fatwas, they only listened to what al-Zindani had to say but they should read other fatwas and speak about what other members of the ‘ulama think and not only of al-Zindani. Many ‘ulama support women’s right to become president if they want to, but now al-Zindani speaks and everyone gets upset, but he is just one person, one opinion. He has the right to express whatever he wants, is his own right of expression, but in the end we are the ones making out of his words and acts something bigger.
I think women’s organizations that denounced so much the fatwa and the Virtue Authority were wrong when they shouted about it. This authority became bigger because these denunciations made it bigger, but their fatwa does not make sense, is one among many others, and they are just another NGO.
YO: - But the Virtue Authority attacked women’s political participation and given that we are so close to the next parliamentary elections…
TAK: - Women’s political participation is a right we have by the Constitution, by law (Women –and man- can vote and be elected members of political institutions since 1960, when the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) was established in the North. In the South, women obtained these and many other rights after the independence from the British colony and the formation of a Marxist-Leninist Republic, the People’s Democratic Republic Of Yemen (PDRY) in 1967.
The PDRY promoted women’s education, declared equality between genders, and offered an appropriate legal environment to assure these rights. For instance, the 1974 Family Code was considered one of the most advanced pieces of legislation in the entire region in relation to the rights it provided to women in terms of marriage, divorce and children’s custody. This code was made null after the unification of North and South in 1990, provoking a deep impact on the life of southerner women).
A fatwa, any fatwa, cannot affect or change these rights. The problem is instead related to a political decision regarding women’s participation: the problem is not the fatwa, is the political decision of the people in power that do not give a real possibility for women to participate. The Constitution, in its article number 2, says that Islam is the religion of this country and that women and men are to be treated equally. The right to participate, we already have it. Now the problem is how to practice what is written in the Constitution, which is another thing. A social explanation would make clear this obstacle, but this social problem has nothing to do with the fatwa.
If the fatwa would be a real problem, a real obstacle, then the State would have to go and make women like Amata al-Razak, (Minister of Social Affairs and Works) leave the Parliament if this was against our religion, which is not the case. I know this fatwa can be dangerous, but is just one fatwa. I know that what al-Zindani says can threaten women’s efforts, but again, this is just one person. We should also speak about other ‘ulama, like Muhammad Saif al-’Udaini, who also speaks about women’s participation explaining women’s rights in Islam. And this is just one example, there are many other opinions to be heard that support women. Al-Zindani is just one voice.
YO: -Why do you think this phenomenon is happening now?
TAK: -For two reasons: one is that the ruling party allowed them to exist as a way to attack the Islah party, which is the main opposition party, but the Virtue Authority is not part of Islah and Islah rejected this authority with a press release from the very beginning, and so did the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), the opposition coalition Islah is part of. The second reason is that Saudi Arabia supports this authority and also the Shi’a in Yemen. When the president knew about this, he stopped the Virtue Authority (By the end of August the president declared his rejection and refusal of religious people becoming moral police in Yemen following the model of Saudi Arabia, al-Shar’a newspaper, 30 August, 2008). Now, have you heard anything else about the authority? Nothing, right? It just lasted for one month, just one.
YO:- What is your opinion about a quota system for women?
TAK: - I refuse the quota but not for the reasons the Virtue Authority said. I have other reasons. First, I consider that women have the capacity to access power on their own, the quota is not giving any right to women because women already have this right to participate. Second, the quota is like a gift from men to women, is not something obtained through merit. It is even worse than a gift, because is given as the last thing you can give. A third reason is that the quota system puts women in a lower position in relation to men, it stresses that they are not equal and that they are weak and not capable of being candidates on their own.
The quota defines women’s participation through women’s gender, and not because of their work (That the quota system hinders women’s participation is an idea widely extended and which departs from the fact that the quota, in this view, is against the principle of equal opportunity, is based on gender and not on ideas, merit or party platforms, is undemocratic and makes election processes be based on gender).I think there are other solutions in order to improve women’s participation in electoral bodies besides the quota system. Changing the party’s law and the election law, stating that no party can run for elections without voting women among their candidates are better solutions. If women are in the parties’ lists, in all the parties and not just in some, women would have the chance to be candidates and would prove themselves towards that.
YO: - Is Islah going to nominate women candidates for the 2009 parliamentary elections?
TAK: - Yes, but the Islah party cannot do this without the law being changed. The election law and the party’s law need to establish the same basis for all parties. In any case, women’s participation when it comes to Islah, is the largest in Yemen (a recent report published by the Women National Committee showed that about 6 women versus 10 men participate in the higher positions of the Islah party, the largest Islamist opposition party in Yemen. The Islah party was placed as the first in terms of women’s participation in Yemen). For instance, in the Majlis al-Shura, which I am a member of, we are 13 women out of 130 men, about 20% are women. This is the reality, and not an authority that is definitely dead.
- Yemen Observer
Friday, September 12, 2008
Jordan: Directory on women experts seeks to counter male-dominated news
AMMAN (JT) - AmmanNet and the World Association of Christian Communications (WACC) have created a searchable directory for Arab women experts in various development themes, which is now available online at www.ammannet.net/look/woman.
The Arabic/English directory comes as the fulfilment of a commitment made in Amman in 2006 for gender-balanced news media, according to a statement released by AmmanNet.
Journalists and reporters attribute their reliance on men to provide expert commentary on different themes to a lack of knowledge on where to find women able to discuss these themes at a professional level, the statement said.
Men constitute 83 per cent of the experts in the news and 86 per cent of spokespersons, according to research coordinated by WACC in 2005.
“In contrast, women appear in a personal capacity as eyewitnesses, giving personal views or as representatives of popular opinion. Women's opinions from their standpoints as professionals are silenced in the news in as much as the women are invisible as experts,” the statement said, adding that such reporting has implications at the individual, family and societal levels, constituting a structural barrier for women's progress as professionals and negating their contribution and participation in societal development.
The online directory of women experts is designed to mitigate these gaps by making available a reference tool for journalists and reporters committed to producing gender-equitable news content.
Daoud Kuttab, founder of AmmanNet who coordinated the project, expressed happiness that the directory has finally seen the light of day.
“We have been working on this project for years, making phone calls and contacting women experts throughout the Arab world,” Kuttab said, noting that the directory will be regularly updated.
“We hope the directory will become an indispensable tool for gender-conscious news practitioners and will contribute to gender-equality struggles in the region,” said Sarah Macharia, the programme manager for media and gender justice at WACC, a global network of communicators committed to communication for social change. The organisation’s key concerns are media diversity, equal and affordable access to communication and knowledge, media and gender justice, and the relationship between communication and power, according to the statement.
The directory follows a workshop in December 2006 to discuss the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Project, a participatory global research study on gender and media which found that expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male and women barely make the news as authorities and experts.
-- Jordan Times
The Arabic/English directory comes as the fulfilment of a commitment made in Amman in 2006 for gender-balanced news media, according to a statement released by AmmanNet.
Journalists and reporters attribute their reliance on men to provide expert commentary on different themes to a lack of knowledge on where to find women able to discuss these themes at a professional level, the statement said.
Men constitute 83 per cent of the experts in the news and 86 per cent of spokespersons, according to research coordinated by WACC in 2005.
“In contrast, women appear in a personal capacity as eyewitnesses, giving personal views or as representatives of popular opinion. Women's opinions from their standpoints as professionals are silenced in the news in as much as the women are invisible as experts,” the statement said, adding that such reporting has implications at the individual, family and societal levels, constituting a structural barrier for women's progress as professionals and negating their contribution and participation in societal development.
The online directory of women experts is designed to mitigate these gaps by making available a reference tool for journalists and reporters committed to producing gender-equitable news content.
Daoud Kuttab, founder of AmmanNet who coordinated the project, expressed happiness that the directory has finally seen the light of day.
“We have been working on this project for years, making phone calls and contacting women experts throughout the Arab world,” Kuttab said, noting that the directory will be regularly updated.
“We hope the directory will become an indispensable tool for gender-conscious news practitioners and will contribute to gender-equality struggles in the region,” said Sarah Macharia, the programme manager for media and gender justice at WACC, a global network of communicators committed to communication for social change. The organisation’s key concerns are media diversity, equal and affordable access to communication and knowledge, media and gender justice, and the relationship between communication and power, according to the statement.
The directory follows a workshop in December 2006 to discuss the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Project, a participatory global research study on gender and media which found that expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male and women barely make the news as authorities and experts.
-- Jordan Times
Jordan: Directory on women experts seeks to counter male-dominated news
AMMAN (JT) - AmmanNet and the World Association of Christian Communications (WACC) have created a searchable directory for Arab women experts in various development themes, which is now available online at www.ammannet.net/look/woman.
The Arabic/English directory comes as the fulfilment of a commitment made in Amman in 2006 for gender-balanced news media, according to a statement released by AmmanNet.
Journalists and reporters attribute their reliance on men to provide expert commentary on different themes to a lack of knowledge on where to find women able to discuss these themes at a professional level, the statement said.
Men constitute 83 per cent of the experts in the news and 86 per cent of spokespersons, according to research coordinated by WACC in 2005.
“In contrast, women appear in a personal capacity as eyewitnesses, giving personal views or as representatives of popular opinion. Women's opinions from their standpoints as professionals are silenced in the news in as much as the women are invisible as experts,” the statement said, adding that such reporting has implications at the individual, family and societal levels, constituting a structural barrier for women's progress as professionals and negating their contribution and participation in societal development.
The online directory of women experts is designed to mitigate these gaps by making available a reference tool for journalists and reporters committed to producing gender-equitable news content.
Daoud Kuttab, founder of AmmanNet who coordinated the project, expressed happiness that the directory has finally seen the light of day.
“We have been working on this project for years, making phone calls and contacting women experts throughout the Arab world,” Kuttab said, noting that the directory will be regularly updated.
“We hope the directory will become an indispensable tool for gender-conscious news practitioners and will contribute to gender-equality struggles in the region,” said Sarah Macharia, the programme manager for media and gender justice at WACC, a global network of communicators committed to communication for social change. The organisation’s key concerns are media diversity, equal and affordable access to communication and knowledge, media and gender justice, and the relationship between communication and power, according to the statement.
The directory follows a workshop in December 2006 to discuss the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Project, a participatory global research study on gender and media which found that expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male and women barely make the news as authorities and experts.
-- Jordan Times
The Arabic/English directory comes as the fulfilment of a commitment made in Amman in 2006 for gender-balanced news media, according to a statement released by AmmanNet.
Journalists and reporters attribute their reliance on men to provide expert commentary on different themes to a lack of knowledge on where to find women able to discuss these themes at a professional level, the statement said.
Men constitute 83 per cent of the experts in the news and 86 per cent of spokespersons, according to research coordinated by WACC in 2005.
“In contrast, women appear in a personal capacity as eyewitnesses, giving personal views or as representatives of popular opinion. Women's opinions from their standpoints as professionals are silenced in the news in as much as the women are invisible as experts,” the statement said, adding that such reporting has implications at the individual, family and societal levels, constituting a structural barrier for women's progress as professionals and negating their contribution and participation in societal development.
The online directory of women experts is designed to mitigate these gaps by making available a reference tool for journalists and reporters committed to producing gender-equitable news content.
Daoud Kuttab, founder of AmmanNet who coordinated the project, expressed happiness that the directory has finally seen the light of day.
“We have been working on this project for years, making phone calls and contacting women experts throughout the Arab world,” Kuttab said, noting that the directory will be regularly updated.
“We hope the directory will become an indispensable tool for gender-conscious news practitioners and will contribute to gender-equality struggles in the region,” said Sarah Macharia, the programme manager for media and gender justice at WACC, a global network of communicators committed to communication for social change. The organisation’s key concerns are media diversity, equal and affordable access to communication and knowledge, media and gender justice, and the relationship between communication and power, according to the statement.
The directory follows a workshop in December 2006 to discuss the 2005 Global Media Monitoring Project, a participatory global research study on gender and media which found that expert opinion in the news is overwhelmingly male and women barely make the news as authorities and experts.
-- Jordan Times
Morocco: Moroccans react strongly to fatwa authorising underage marriage
Moroccans and rights groups are speaking out against a recent fatwa that would allow parents to marry off their underage daughters.
Moroccan Cheikh Mohammed Maghraoui has caused indignation among rights groups and citizens who denounce his recent fatwa authorising the marriage of nine-year-old girls.
Opponents to Cheikh Mohammed Maghraoui's fatwa say the marriage of nine-year-old girls is a violation of human rights in general, and children's rights in particular.
Maghraoui said that at the age of nine, girls are capable of marriage, just like Aisha was when the Prophet Mohammed married her.
"We thought we were rid of those problems after the passage of the family code, which included a number of guarantees to protect children from early marriage, and after setting up the Fatwa Council," the Democratic League of Women’s Rights (LDDF) said in a statement.
The fatwa "endorses rape and child abuse of a nine-year-old child," the LDDF statement continued, adding that the organisation believes the fatwa goes against the children rights' convention and the traditions of the Moroccan people.
Morocco's new family code states that men and woman are eligible for marriage only at the age of 18. It also states that marriage for individuals below the legal age can be sanctioned only by a judge. The law allows the judge to grant such an authorisation only if he finds the marriage to be in the best interest of the parties involved, and only after consulting with the minor’s parents or legal guardian and with consideration paid to medical counselling and the findings of social research.
Cheikh Maghraoui's fatwa was issued in response to a question on whether a woman can get married before reaching the age of menstruation. In his answer, El Maghraoui said that marriage was not linked to menstruation. According to El Maghraoui's website, the fatwa had received 1,642 reads as of September 9th – more than other fatwas on the site – after it was picked up by several local newspapers.
Attorney Mourad Bakouri told the press on Thursday (September 11th) that he filed a lawsuit against Maghraoui for calling for the abuse of minors.
"I have lodged a complaint against this infringement upon the Family Code, the rights of children and the risk of rape," said the lawyer.
"It made us feel the danger that is threatening our families and social stability," said Najat Anwar, president of the Don't Touch My Child association. Religious leaders such as Maghraoui should not be allowed to issue such verdicts freely, she said.
Islamic scholar Abdelbari Zemzem told reporters that the fatwa is unacceptable from a religious point of view. The marriage of underage girls is inapplicable to modern societies, he said, where no ethical, religious or social interest could possibly authorise the marriage of a nine-year-old girl.
Many Moroccan citizens agree.
University student Khaled Najib said such fatwas distort religion and "give enemies of Islam a good reason to attack us and call us backward-minded."
Housewife Fatima Banani said "I do not think any two sane parents who care about the best interests of their daughter, who is still below the age of menstruation, will marry her off, even if the suitor is a good and honourable man."
By Imane Belhaj for Magharebia in Casablanca
Moroccan Cheikh Mohammed Maghraoui has caused indignation among rights groups and citizens who denounce his recent fatwa authorising the marriage of nine-year-old girls.
Opponents to Cheikh Mohammed Maghraoui's fatwa say the marriage of nine-year-old girls is a violation of human rights in general, and children's rights in particular.
Maghraoui said that at the age of nine, girls are capable of marriage, just like Aisha was when the Prophet Mohammed married her.
"We thought we were rid of those problems after the passage of the family code, which included a number of guarantees to protect children from early marriage, and after setting up the Fatwa Council," the Democratic League of Women’s Rights (LDDF) said in a statement.
The fatwa "endorses rape and child abuse of a nine-year-old child," the LDDF statement continued, adding that the organisation believes the fatwa goes against the children rights' convention and the traditions of the Moroccan people.
Morocco's new family code states that men and woman are eligible for marriage only at the age of 18. It also states that marriage for individuals below the legal age can be sanctioned only by a judge. The law allows the judge to grant such an authorisation only if he finds the marriage to be in the best interest of the parties involved, and only after consulting with the minor’s parents or legal guardian and with consideration paid to medical counselling and the findings of social research.
Cheikh Maghraoui's fatwa was issued in response to a question on whether a woman can get married before reaching the age of menstruation. In his answer, El Maghraoui said that marriage was not linked to menstruation. According to El Maghraoui's website, the fatwa had received 1,642 reads as of September 9th – more than other fatwas on the site – after it was picked up by several local newspapers.
Attorney Mourad Bakouri told the press on Thursday (September 11th) that he filed a lawsuit against Maghraoui for calling for the abuse of minors.
"I have lodged a complaint against this infringement upon the Family Code, the rights of children and the risk of rape," said the lawyer.
"It made us feel the danger that is threatening our families and social stability," said Najat Anwar, president of the Don't Touch My Child association. Religious leaders such as Maghraoui should not be allowed to issue such verdicts freely, she said.
Islamic scholar Abdelbari Zemzem told reporters that the fatwa is unacceptable from a religious point of view. The marriage of underage girls is inapplicable to modern societies, he said, where no ethical, religious or social interest could possibly authorise the marriage of a nine-year-old girl.
Many Moroccan citizens agree.
University student Khaled Najib said such fatwas distort religion and "give enemies of Islam a good reason to attack us and call us backward-minded."
Housewife Fatima Banani said "I do not think any two sane parents who care about the best interests of their daughter, who is still below the age of menstruation, will marry her off, even if the suitor is a good and honourable man."
By Imane Belhaj for Magharebia in Casablanca
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Yemen: Women respond to the Vice and Virtue Committee-Part II
The Yemen Women Union is one of the oldest women’s organizations in Yemen. It was formed in 1990 by combining the northern and southern branches, which existed before unification.
This is the second part of a series of interviews that aim to reflect the opinion of several women’s organizations, members of political parties, researchers and journalists that have responded to the establishment of the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC) and to the fatwa issued against women’s political participation in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections that will be held in April 2009.
In this occasion we interviewed Ramzia al-Eryani, Chairwoman of the Yemen Women Union (YWU), a non-governamental organization that works in partnership with the government’s policies.
Al-Eryani studied in Ta’iiz, where she started from an early age to work at a Women’s Society teaching and focusing on illiteracy programs. She writes in newspapers since she was 15 years old and considers herself as one of the first women that wrote about women’s issues in Yemen.
She studied Philosophy, with concentrations in Sociology and Psychology in Cairo, and conducted research on political art. In 1980 she was one of the first women to work as a diplomat and in 1982 she moved to India, where she obtained her master’s from Nehru University. Al-Eryani has worked in the field of diplomacy also in Tunisia and in Washington DC. In 2000 she was called to work for the YWU and became the chairperson of the Union. In July 2008 Ramzia al-Eryany was again unanimously elected to hold the YWU’s leadership.
Yemen Observer (YO): - When did you first hear about the Vice and Virtue Committee?
Ramzia al-Eryani (RAE): -Actually, the very same day that they held their conference in July. Maybe I heard something about them before but I did not believe it, and when they held their conference and I read it in the newspapers I could not believe it either. That same night I called my colleagues and set a reunion for next day. Early that morning we prepared a letter that we sent right away to the speaker of the parliament.
In the letter we provided proof from the Qur’an in order to remind that women’s political participation has never been forbidden by Islam and that the fatwa issued by the VVC against a quota that would reserve 15 percent of the seats at the parliament for female candidates is against Islam. Al-Zindani wanted civil society to follow his Virtue Committee, but the society reacted in a very different way.
When they talked about virtue they only focused on women, on nothing else. We are treated as objects, not as human beings. But the Qur’an does not treat women like this, for men and women are the same thing. However, no one talks about the rights Islam provides to women. Our Prophet said that women must be educated but the Virtue Committee now acts against this. Women need the possibility to participate in the political life of the country.
YO: - Why do you think this is happening now?
RAE: - This is not something new, the people that conform the VVC have been arranging this since long time ago. Their conference congregated around 3000 people and they cannot organize such a gathering from one day to another. Before the VVC held their conference I did not hear about them in the sense of them being any sort of authority, but many people started to talk about acts here and there in the country that we now connect to this committee.
It is a coincidence that they held their conference the same week that the president declared that the war in Sa’adah was over, but this is just a coincidence because they have been preparing this long time ago. Somehow, they were given the possibility to become an authority and they are using it now, months before the parliamentary elections of 2009. It is a good moment for them, the government is busy with the end of the war in Sa’adah, with establishing the elections committee and with all the discussions that issue is provoking.
YO: - Besides the note to the speaker of the parliament, what other actions is the YWU taking regarding the VVC and in reference to a female quota?
RAE: - We are holding several seminars to increase women’s political participation and we will continue with these activities. We went to Ta’iiz, Mahwit, Shawa and many other places in Yemen training women, making them aware about the need of their political participation, giving them the tools to become candidates and explaining to them the rights they have following the Qur’an. Also we are holding workshops to create awareness about the families from Sa’adah that are in need of help after the war. This is our work as a non-governmental organisation but also we want to issue another fatwa against the one the VVC issued. We will not keep quiet. I am responsible for Yemeni women, and not only for myself.
YO: - What can you tell us about other women activist’s reactions?
RAE: -We are also working with women members of the Islah party and they are somehow divided. Some of them are against the VVC, some of them with it. There are women that do not agree with everything the VVC says, mainly with their stand on women’s political participation. It is necessary to remember that members of Islah from Hodeidah and Ta’iiz were candidates for the Local Council elections in 2006, so of course they have a different opinion on what is going on inside Islah.
On our side we are going to continue with our workshops in order to increase women’s participation in the upcoming elections and so as to generate women’s leadership at all levels. The workshops are our fight and this is one of our ways to raise awareness about women’s rights in Islam. We have to go ahead with our ideas. Women candidates for the 2009 parliamentary elections need to start building actions, awareness, political projects, from now.
Written By: Anahi Alviso-Marino
This is the second part of a series of interviews that aim to reflect the opinion of several women’s organizations, members of political parties, researchers and journalists that have responded to the establishment of the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC) and to the fatwa issued against women’s political participation in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections that will be held in April 2009.
In this occasion we interviewed Ramzia al-Eryani, Chairwoman of the Yemen Women Union (YWU), a non-governamental organization that works in partnership with the government’s policies.
Al-Eryani studied in Ta’iiz, where she started from an early age to work at a Women’s Society teaching and focusing on illiteracy programs. She writes in newspapers since she was 15 years old and considers herself as one of the first women that wrote about women’s issues in Yemen.
She studied Philosophy, with concentrations in Sociology and Psychology in Cairo, and conducted research on political art. In 1980 she was one of the first women to work as a diplomat and in 1982 she moved to India, where she obtained her master’s from Nehru University. Al-Eryani has worked in the field of diplomacy also in Tunisia and in Washington DC. In 2000 she was called to work for the YWU and became the chairperson of the Union. In July 2008 Ramzia al-Eryany was again unanimously elected to hold the YWU’s leadership.
Yemen Observer (YO): - When did you first hear about the Vice and Virtue Committee?
Ramzia al-Eryani (RAE): -Actually, the very same day that they held their conference in July. Maybe I heard something about them before but I did not believe it, and when they held their conference and I read it in the newspapers I could not believe it either. That same night I called my colleagues and set a reunion for next day. Early that morning we prepared a letter that we sent right away to the speaker of the parliament.
In the letter we provided proof from the Qur’an in order to remind that women’s political participation has never been forbidden by Islam and that the fatwa issued by the VVC against a quota that would reserve 15 percent of the seats at the parliament for female candidates is against Islam. Al-Zindani wanted civil society to follow his Virtue Committee, but the society reacted in a very different way.
When they talked about virtue they only focused on women, on nothing else. We are treated as objects, not as human beings. But the Qur’an does not treat women like this, for men and women are the same thing. However, no one talks about the rights Islam provides to women. Our Prophet said that women must be educated but the Virtue Committee now acts against this. Women need the possibility to participate in the political life of the country.
YO: - Why do you think this is happening now?
RAE: - This is not something new, the people that conform the VVC have been arranging this since long time ago. Their conference congregated around 3000 people and they cannot organize such a gathering from one day to another. Before the VVC held their conference I did not hear about them in the sense of them being any sort of authority, but many people started to talk about acts here and there in the country that we now connect to this committee.
It is a coincidence that they held their conference the same week that the president declared that the war in Sa’adah was over, but this is just a coincidence because they have been preparing this long time ago. Somehow, they were given the possibility to become an authority and they are using it now, months before the parliamentary elections of 2009. It is a good moment for them, the government is busy with the end of the war in Sa’adah, with establishing the elections committee and with all the discussions that issue is provoking.
YO: - Besides the note to the speaker of the parliament, what other actions is the YWU taking regarding the VVC and in reference to a female quota?
RAE: - We are holding several seminars to increase women’s political participation and we will continue with these activities. We went to Ta’iiz, Mahwit, Shawa and many other places in Yemen training women, making them aware about the need of their political participation, giving them the tools to become candidates and explaining to them the rights they have following the Qur’an. Also we are holding workshops to create awareness about the families from Sa’adah that are in need of help after the war. This is our work as a non-governmental organisation but also we want to issue another fatwa against the one the VVC issued. We will not keep quiet. I am responsible for Yemeni women, and not only for myself.
YO: - What can you tell us about other women activist’s reactions?
RAE: -We are also working with women members of the Islah party and they are somehow divided. Some of them are against the VVC, some of them with it. There are women that do not agree with everything the VVC says, mainly with their stand on women’s political participation. It is necessary to remember that members of Islah from Hodeidah and Ta’iiz were candidates for the Local Council elections in 2006, so of course they have a different opinion on what is going on inside Islah.
On our side we are going to continue with our workshops in order to increase women’s participation in the upcoming elections and so as to generate women’s leadership at all levels. The workshops are our fight and this is one of our ways to raise awareness about women’s rights in Islam. We have to go ahead with our ideas. Women candidates for the 2009 parliamentary elections need to start building actions, awareness, political projects, from now.
Written By: Anahi Alviso-Marino
Yemen: Civil service minister discusses women employment issues
SANA'A, Sep. 08 (Saba)- Minister of Civil Service and Insurance Yahya al-Shuaiby discussed on Monday with deputy chairwoman of the National Committee for Women Huria Mashhour a number of issues related to women, coming on top women employment process and increasing ratio of employing women in the governmental sector, specially in sectors of education and health.
The meeting dealt with structure of the National Committee for Women and its institutional built. They affirmed the importance of disseminating media message that supports women and integrating them in the labor market in accordance with trends of the government and its development policies.
The minister said that "the civil service is currently undergoing a provisional period and will change into a ministry to draw policies consisting of three sectors."
For her part, Mashhour reviewed recommendations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which recommends increasing the number of women in the workforce, specially in the governmental sector.
- AM/AM Saba
The meeting dealt with structure of the National Committee for Women and its institutional built. They affirmed the importance of disseminating media message that supports women and integrating them in the labor market in accordance with trends of the government and its development policies.
The minister said that "the civil service is currently undergoing a provisional period and will change into a ministry to draw policies consisting of three sectors."
For her part, Mashhour reviewed recommendations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which recommends increasing the number of women in the workforce, specially in the governmental sector.
- AM/AM Saba
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Yemen: Women respond to the Vice and Virtue Committee-Part I
On July 15th Yemeni religious and tribal leaders held a conference in which they announced to an audience of some 2000 male attendees their intention to create an authority to protect virtue and fight against vice, which they called the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC).
This authority aims at monitoring the activities of individuals and institutions in order to report them to the police if they consider that they transgress Islamic precepts. One of the first official actions taken by this committee was to issue a fatwa or legal pronouncement against women’s political participation, namely, against the quota system that the government wants to implement in response to women’s pressure to acquire representation in the political institutions.
The quota, which is part of the amendments that the government proposed to the electoral law, would allocate 15 percent of the seats at the Parliament that would be reserved to women candidates. Several women’s organizations, members of political parties, researchers and journalists have widely responded to the establishment of the Vice and Virtue authority and to the fatwa issued against women’s political participation, especially since the next parliamentary elections will be held in April 2009 and the electoral campaign has definitely started. We wish to publish a series of interviews held with some of these women who are analysing the meanings of the VVC and responding to their actions.
In this issue we interviewed Hooria Mashoor, Deputy Chairperson of the Women National Committee (WNC), the technical committee of the government’s Supreme Council for Women Affairs. Mashoor, who comes from Aden, works at the WNC since the year 2000. She has studied in Germany and Egypt and worked as a teacher and as a trainer at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Yemen Observer (YO) -When did you first hear about the Vice and Virtue Committee?
Hooria Mashoor (HM) - Three months before they held the meeting that established the authority in July, I started hearing about groups of people ‘working for the prevention of vice.’ I first knew about them through a colleague from the WNC who went to Hodeidhah for work.
When she arrived to the hotel she was asked by a group of men for her mahram or male companion and was told that she was not supposed to be alone at the hotel. She called us saying that she did not know what to do and that a group claiming to be official was asking her for a mahram if she wanted to stay at the hotel. They did not announce themselves as members of the VVC, because this authority was not yet presented as such, but they were working for the prevention of vice and the spread of virtue.
I also heard that some two or three months ago religious leaders, members of what now is known as the ‘virtue committee,’ went to the presidential office to meet the president. He gave them the green light to do ‘what is good for society.’
I do not know how they presented their project to the president, what they explained and what they omitted, but however they did it, they obtained the green light to carry out their activities and to establish their committee.
This is shocking because we believe that there is a state with state’s bodies that must control this, but this organization is not part of the state. Also, I do not know if the president was well aware about their ideas related to the quota, because it goes against the work of the government.
YO - Why do you think this authority emerges now?
HM - I consider that this is a political action, a political strategy as we approach the parliamentary elections which are just around the corner (April 2009). This political action is aimed at diving Islah, the main and biggest opposition party (Hizb al Islah, commonly referred as the biggest Islamist party in Yemen, is one the parties that conform the main opposition coalition, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) together with the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), Nasserite Unionists Political Party (NUPP), Federation of Popular Yemeni Forces (PF), the Al Haq party and the Arab Baath Socialist Party). The Virtue Committee has a political agenda, for they are presenting their authority and acting against women’s political participation just before the upcoming parliamentary elections. In July 15th they presented a political agenda: the quota is not against virtue, is a political issue.
They are also against women working and they want to send them back home, which would stop the development of the society. We are a poor country and one of the causes is that women do not fully participate in the economy of the country. In addition to this, when we are just getting to the point of implementing the quota, all of the sudden this committee issues a fatwa against it, but they will not stop us because the quota is a policy from the government, is part of the government’s program. I also consider that the VVC is a political and not a religious committee because they asked the president to continue using military means to stop the war in Sa’adah, to stop the al-Huthi rebels (The Sa’adah conflict entered this year its fifth year of a war in which the Shi’a al-Huthi rebels (followers of the Zaydi doctrine) fight to reinstate the Imamate that was overthrown in 1962.
In july 2008 president Ali Abdullah Saleh announced the “end of the war”). Approximately three days later the president declares that the war is over. What is interesting is that, before unification (1990), these same political figures were against unification and now they ask the president to maintain the country united.
YO -Is the Virtue Committee a legitimate authority to issue a fatwa?
HM -One member of the parliament e-mailed me questioning under which umbrella this committee is working. Even in the General People’s Congress’s (GPC) members of the party question this authority (The GPC is the ruling party since the unification of the country in 1990. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president and head of the party, is in power since 1978, when he became president of the Yemen Arab Republic in the north).
We also question them and we will send a letter to the official ‘ulama (group of religious leaders and scholars) responsible to issue a formal fatwa (See article “Yemeni female political activists fight back,” The Yemen Observer, 12 August, 2008). We want a fatwa from them, the official authority, if they can prove that the quota is against Islam.
Some ‘ulama are part of the VVC, but the official ‘ulama are the only ones that can actually issue such thing. Some of the ‘ulama also support the idea of increasing women’s participation in politics with the quota system, so their vision on this issue varies. Above all, what is risky is that they are using our religion, which is a fundamental factor in our society, to convince people about things that are not present in Islam or in the Qur’an, and that our work or the work of human rights activists goes against Islam, but human right activist here are Muslims as well.
YO –What do you now about how is the VVC being financed?
HM -We were amazed because thousands of religious men came from all over the country and also from Saudi Arabia to a conference that cost YR 200 million. Al-Eman University, al-Zindani (Sheikh al-Zindani leads the “conservative” stream inside the Islah Party, is the Chairman of the Islah Party’s Shura Council, rector of the Islamic Iman University in Sana’a, and was elected as president of the Vice and Virtue Committee in August 2008) and numerous tribal and rich men contributed economically to the conference. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is helping them and members from the Saudi Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice also attended the event. We think that a great part of their economic funds come from this source.
YO -What is and has been the work of the Women National Committee towards the quota system?
HM -We worked on the amendment of the electoral law and the political participation law, that is, in the amendment of the constitution and the pertinent laws in order for them to include a quota for women of 15 percent. We asked for the minimum in the short term, but for the long term we want a quota of 30 percent. If the parliament passes the quota and amends the laws considering our demands, then the entire problem with the Virtue Committee will be over. It would be embarrassing for the GPC to go backwards, and it would be very difficult for them to go back. That is why our main focus now is to pass the law. The WNC is a policy maker institution, we also work with grassroots organizations like NGOs but our focus is to pass the quota as a law.
YO -How are other women reacting to the quota and the VVC?
HM -Some time ago some women and I met at Amal Basha’s office (head of the Non-governmental organisation Sisters Arab Forum) to discuss the issue of the quota and how to apply it. We all agreed on the fact that we need to change the system of election (the lists) but also we realised that perhaps we cannot change this completely, so at least we need the quota. Women members of Islah were present and they also said that the JMP wants to change the system of election, but that needs to go first and then the quota. I asked them ‘are you not going to confront your party on this issue?’ and one of them responded that this is an internal and a different issue, which needed a different type of solution. I respected that because we all have different ways of working. In any case, if we make the quota become a law, then no one will be able to change it. And I can assure you of one thing: no one will stop us in this.
Written By: Anahi Alviso-Marino
This authority aims at monitoring the activities of individuals and institutions in order to report them to the police if they consider that they transgress Islamic precepts. One of the first official actions taken by this committee was to issue a fatwa or legal pronouncement against women’s political participation, namely, against the quota system that the government wants to implement in response to women’s pressure to acquire representation in the political institutions.
The quota, which is part of the amendments that the government proposed to the electoral law, would allocate 15 percent of the seats at the Parliament that would be reserved to women candidates. Several women’s organizations, members of political parties, researchers and journalists have widely responded to the establishment of the Vice and Virtue authority and to the fatwa issued against women’s political participation, especially since the next parliamentary elections will be held in April 2009 and the electoral campaign has definitely started. We wish to publish a series of interviews held with some of these women who are analysing the meanings of the VVC and responding to their actions.
In this issue we interviewed Hooria Mashoor, Deputy Chairperson of the Women National Committee (WNC), the technical committee of the government’s Supreme Council for Women Affairs. Mashoor, who comes from Aden, works at the WNC since the year 2000. She has studied in Germany and Egypt and worked as a teacher and as a trainer at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Yemen Observer (YO) -When did you first hear about the Vice and Virtue Committee?
Hooria Mashoor (HM) - Three months before they held the meeting that established the authority in July, I started hearing about groups of people ‘working for the prevention of vice.’ I first knew about them through a colleague from the WNC who went to Hodeidhah for work.
When she arrived to the hotel she was asked by a group of men for her mahram or male companion and was told that she was not supposed to be alone at the hotel. She called us saying that she did not know what to do and that a group claiming to be official was asking her for a mahram if she wanted to stay at the hotel. They did not announce themselves as members of the VVC, because this authority was not yet presented as such, but they were working for the prevention of vice and the spread of virtue.
I also heard that some two or three months ago religious leaders, members of what now is known as the ‘virtue committee,’ went to the presidential office to meet the president. He gave them the green light to do ‘what is good for society.’
I do not know how they presented their project to the president, what they explained and what they omitted, but however they did it, they obtained the green light to carry out their activities and to establish their committee.
This is shocking because we believe that there is a state with state’s bodies that must control this, but this organization is not part of the state. Also, I do not know if the president was well aware about their ideas related to the quota, because it goes against the work of the government.
YO - Why do you think this authority emerges now?
HM - I consider that this is a political action, a political strategy as we approach the parliamentary elections which are just around the corner (April 2009). This political action is aimed at diving Islah, the main and biggest opposition party (Hizb al Islah, commonly referred as the biggest Islamist party in Yemen, is one the parties that conform the main opposition coalition, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) together with the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), Nasserite Unionists Political Party (NUPP), Federation of Popular Yemeni Forces (PF), the Al Haq party and the Arab Baath Socialist Party). The Virtue Committee has a political agenda, for they are presenting their authority and acting against women’s political participation just before the upcoming parliamentary elections. In July 15th they presented a political agenda: the quota is not against virtue, is a political issue.
They are also against women working and they want to send them back home, which would stop the development of the society. We are a poor country and one of the causes is that women do not fully participate in the economy of the country. In addition to this, when we are just getting to the point of implementing the quota, all of the sudden this committee issues a fatwa against it, but they will not stop us because the quota is a policy from the government, is part of the government’s program. I also consider that the VVC is a political and not a religious committee because they asked the president to continue using military means to stop the war in Sa’adah, to stop the al-Huthi rebels (The Sa’adah conflict entered this year its fifth year of a war in which the Shi’a al-Huthi rebels (followers of the Zaydi doctrine) fight to reinstate the Imamate that was overthrown in 1962.
In july 2008 president Ali Abdullah Saleh announced the “end of the war”). Approximately three days later the president declares that the war is over. What is interesting is that, before unification (1990), these same political figures were against unification and now they ask the president to maintain the country united.
YO -Is the Virtue Committee a legitimate authority to issue a fatwa?
HM -One member of the parliament e-mailed me questioning under which umbrella this committee is working. Even in the General People’s Congress’s (GPC) members of the party question this authority (The GPC is the ruling party since the unification of the country in 1990. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president and head of the party, is in power since 1978, when he became president of the Yemen Arab Republic in the north).
We also question them and we will send a letter to the official ‘ulama (group of religious leaders and scholars) responsible to issue a formal fatwa (See article “Yemeni female political activists fight back,” The Yemen Observer, 12 August, 2008). We want a fatwa from them, the official authority, if they can prove that the quota is against Islam.
Some ‘ulama are part of the VVC, but the official ‘ulama are the only ones that can actually issue such thing. Some of the ‘ulama also support the idea of increasing women’s participation in politics with the quota system, so their vision on this issue varies. Above all, what is risky is that they are using our religion, which is a fundamental factor in our society, to convince people about things that are not present in Islam or in the Qur’an, and that our work or the work of human rights activists goes against Islam, but human right activist here are Muslims as well.
YO –What do you now about how is the VVC being financed?
HM -We were amazed because thousands of religious men came from all over the country and also from Saudi Arabia to a conference that cost YR 200 million. Al-Eman University, al-Zindani (Sheikh al-Zindani leads the “conservative” stream inside the Islah Party, is the Chairman of the Islah Party’s Shura Council, rector of the Islamic Iman University in Sana’a, and was elected as president of the Vice and Virtue Committee in August 2008) and numerous tribal and rich men contributed economically to the conference. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is helping them and members from the Saudi Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice also attended the event. We think that a great part of their economic funds come from this source.
YO -What is and has been the work of the Women National Committee towards the quota system?
HM -We worked on the amendment of the electoral law and the political participation law, that is, in the amendment of the constitution and the pertinent laws in order for them to include a quota for women of 15 percent. We asked for the minimum in the short term, but for the long term we want a quota of 30 percent. If the parliament passes the quota and amends the laws considering our demands, then the entire problem with the Virtue Committee will be over. It would be embarrassing for the GPC to go backwards, and it would be very difficult for them to go back. That is why our main focus now is to pass the law. The WNC is a policy maker institution, we also work with grassroots organizations like NGOs but our focus is to pass the quota as a law.
YO -How are other women reacting to the quota and the VVC?
HM -Some time ago some women and I met at Amal Basha’s office (head of the Non-governmental organisation Sisters Arab Forum) to discuss the issue of the quota and how to apply it. We all agreed on the fact that we need to change the system of election (the lists) but also we realised that perhaps we cannot change this completely, so at least we need the quota. Women members of Islah were present and they also said that the JMP wants to change the system of election, but that needs to go first and then the quota. I asked them ‘are you not going to confront your party on this issue?’ and one of them responded that this is an internal and a different issue, which needed a different type of solution. I respected that because we all have different ways of working. In any case, if we make the quota become a law, then no one will be able to change it. And I can assure you of one thing: no one will stop us in this.
Written By: Anahi Alviso-Marino
Friday, September 5, 2008
Saudi Arabia: HRC opens women’s wing in Riyadh
RIYADH: The Human Rights Commission (HRC) announced [Sep 3] the opening of its women’s branch here to look into cases of human rights violations against women and children.
“‘Dignity of women and childhood support’ is the motto of this new wing,” said Wafiqah Al-Dakhil, the newly appointed head of the women’s wing.
She added that its aim is to create awareness about the laws pertaining to women and children through campaigns and define rights as established by Islam.
Al-Dakhil said the new wing would seek the help of volunteers and experts from all parts of the Kingdom to accomplish its mission. She also registered her thanks to HRC President Turki Al-Sudairy for the establishment of the new wing that would concentrate on women and children.
She said she looks forward to expanding the existing section by adding new departments.
“Our activities would include organizing programs for raising awareness about children and their families on children’s rights; receiving children’s complaints; and providing legal intervention in guardianship, citizenship issues and child abuse cases,” she added.
The new wing will have a team of specialists in psychology and sociology, who will receive complaints relating to violence, sexual harassment, arbitrary divorce, rape and personal cases.
By Mohammed Rasooldeen, Arab News
“‘Dignity of women and childhood support’ is the motto of this new wing,” said Wafiqah Al-Dakhil, the newly appointed head of the women’s wing.
She added that its aim is to create awareness about the laws pertaining to women and children through campaigns and define rights as established by Islam.
Al-Dakhil said the new wing would seek the help of volunteers and experts from all parts of the Kingdom to accomplish its mission. She also registered her thanks to HRC President Turki Al-Sudairy for the establishment of the new wing that would concentrate on women and children.
She said she looks forward to expanding the existing section by adding new departments.
“Our activities would include organizing programs for raising awareness about children and their families on children’s rights; receiving children’s complaints; and providing legal intervention in guardianship, citizenship issues and child abuse cases,” she added.
The new wing will have a team of specialists in psychology and sociology, who will receive complaints relating to violence, sexual harassment, arbitrary divorce, rape and personal cases.
By Mohammed Rasooldeen, Arab News
Saudi Arabia: Women’s varsity to have new campus - King Abdullah to lay foundation soon
JEDDAH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will lay the foundation stone of the new campus of Kingdom’s first women university shortly, Princess Al-Jowhara bint Fahd, president of the university, announced yesterday. Located north of Riyadh, the university will have 13 new colleges.
She praised King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan for their tremendous support to Riyadh Women's University, which, she said, will usher in a new era in higher education for women in Saudi Arabia. “We want to make it a leading international university,” Princess Al-Jowhara told Al-Riyadh Arabic daily. She disclosed plans about tie-ups with prominent universities inside and outside the Kingdom to promote research. The women’s university, along with its affiliated colleges, has so far enrolled 17,000 women students, she added.
She spoke about the university’s plan to focus on educational programs that are essential to meet the Kingdom’s job market requirements. She also praised Saudi women for their increasing role in the Kingdom’s development activities.
The university will have three health colleges: A college for nursing, another for pharmacology and a college for naturopathy. Other colleges are for administrative sciences; computer science and technology; nursery training; sciences, languages and translation.
“The new colleges will accommodate 1,500 students this academic year,” the princess said, adding that existing colleges would be restructured in tune with job market requirements. The university and its affiliated colleges have given admission to 61 percent of secondary school graduates in the Riyadh region.
Al-Jowhara said her university devised its educational programs after consulting different ministries including the ministries of labor, commerce and industry and economy and planning. “We have prepared a strategic plan for the next 10 years.”
Speaking about the new university campus, she said it would be spread over an area of eight million square meters along the Airport Road, north of Riyadh. “The king has pledged his moral and material support for the university project and has been following up the project despite his busy itinerary,” she added.
Princess Al-Jowhara advised Saudi women to adhere to Islamic culture and values and work hard to realize the hopes and aspirations of their country’s leadership. She stressed the need to resolve the unemployment problem among Saudi women by creating new job opportunities for them.
The university recently announced its plan to provide a six-week summer training for women graduates. The training program is one of the university’s major projects and is to take place each summer over the next four years.
Al-Jowhara said the program would be continuously reviewed and updated according to job market needs.
By P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News
She praised King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan for their tremendous support to Riyadh Women's University, which, she said, will usher in a new era in higher education for women in Saudi Arabia. “We want to make it a leading international university,” Princess Al-Jowhara told Al-Riyadh Arabic daily. She disclosed plans about tie-ups with prominent universities inside and outside the Kingdom to promote research. The women’s university, along with its affiliated colleges, has so far enrolled 17,000 women students, she added.
She spoke about the university’s plan to focus on educational programs that are essential to meet the Kingdom’s job market requirements. She also praised Saudi women for their increasing role in the Kingdom’s development activities.
The university will have three health colleges: A college for nursing, another for pharmacology and a college for naturopathy. Other colleges are for administrative sciences; computer science and technology; nursery training; sciences, languages and translation.
“The new colleges will accommodate 1,500 students this academic year,” the princess said, adding that existing colleges would be restructured in tune with job market requirements. The university and its affiliated colleges have given admission to 61 percent of secondary school graduates in the Riyadh region.
Al-Jowhara said her university devised its educational programs after consulting different ministries including the ministries of labor, commerce and industry and economy and planning. “We have prepared a strategic plan for the next 10 years.”
Speaking about the new university campus, she said it would be spread over an area of eight million square meters along the Airport Road, north of Riyadh. “The king has pledged his moral and material support for the university project and has been following up the project despite his busy itinerary,” she added.
Princess Al-Jowhara advised Saudi women to adhere to Islamic culture and values and work hard to realize the hopes and aspirations of their country’s leadership. She stressed the need to resolve the unemployment problem among Saudi women by creating new job opportunities for them.
The university recently announced its plan to provide a six-week summer training for women graduates. The training program is one of the university’s major projects and is to take place each summer over the next four years.
Al-Jowhara said the program would be continuously reviewed and updated according to job market needs.
By P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Saudi Arabia: Girl selected as youth ambassador
JEDDAH –A first-year student at the College of Business Administration, Ala’a Al–Mizyen, has recently been selected as Saudi Youth Ambassador for the Middle East Youth Initiative. Ala’a, 18, is also the founder president of the on-campus student organization Saudi Arabia’s Women of Tomorrow.Saudi Arabia’s Women of Tomorrow aims to instill and nurture the leadership role in female students, Ala’a said. She looks forward to providing opportunities for character development and enrichment, to extend networking and team-building beyond classrooms.
The student organization organizes periodic debates on current local and international issues. Moreover, presentations are made by students on matters that interest the present generation.
Ala’a finds much of her inspiration and enthusiasm from the global activist work she regularly takes part in, most recently the Young Arab Leaders/Learning from the Future Conference held in Dubai.
Ala’a was also selected by the British Council from a pool of applicants to attend the Learning from the Future workshop. As the youngest and only undergraduate college student chosen, she represented Saudi Arabia at the workshop covering global and regional issues such as climate change, the multi-polar world, energy crisis, and relations between the Arab World and the West.
Presently Ala’a is working on her first article for the Middle East Youth Initiative which will be based on national educational reform.
She is optimistic about national women’s development, seeing great potential in her colleagues and is devoted to increasing the variety and effectiveness of female leaders.
By Sabahat F. Siddiqi, Saudi Gazette
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