Women's Issues in the Middle East

Saudi Arabia: Woman who dares to fight for her fair share in Saudi

2009-12-13T11:11:00.001-05:00

By Caryle Murphy, Foreign Correspondent

Wajeha al Huwaider has openly challenged the underpinning of women’s legal status in Saudi Arabia. Mido Ahmad / AFP

RIYADH // She wears pink and green head scarves. She calls Saudi Arabia a “prison” for women. She writes, and talks, and protests. But nothing changes.

Wajeha al Huwaider has fans among western diplomats and international human rights monitors. But in her own country, the place she cares about most, this Saudi women’s rights activist is almost invisible, largely because of reservations, even among reformers, about her tactics.

For several years, Ms al Huwaider has been campaigning for greater personal freedom for Saudi women and an end to the kingdom’s “guardianship” system, which gives men virtually total control over women’s lives.

“If Saudi Arabia wants to be part of this world they … cannot continue paralysing half of society and discriminating against them and treating them like, you know, a third-class citizen,” Ms al Huwaider recently told the BBC.

Known for her blunt language in media interviews, she also favours high-profile tactics to promote her cause. In 2006, she walked along the Bahrain-Saudi causeway holding up a sign that said “Give Women Their Rights”.

To mark International Women’s Day in 2008, she protested against the ban on female drivers with a video of herself on YouTube driving a vehicle. And in June, she sought to leave Saudi Arabia without written permission from her male “guardian” three times – but was turned back by border guards.

During a recent visit to Washington, Ms al Huwaider, 48, stood outside a subway station with a sign saying “Saudi Women Need Your Support”.

The divorced mother of two, who works as an educational analyst at Aramco, the Saudi oil company, defends her approach, arguing that other tactics are ineffective.

“We tried to ask for our rights quietly, nicely. We wrote articles, we sent petitions. We haven’t heard anything from the authorities,” she told The National. “So I thought that if we can do it more in a bold way, then maybe they will hear us. And still we don’t get any response. But at least the rest of the world will hear us.

“Can you imagine that for 30 years we are asking for our right to drive cars?” she said.

A good number of Saudis – both men and women – agree with Ms al Huwaider and say they admire her courage and perseverance. But they do not openly join her campaign, they say, because they find her language too harsh and her tactics counterproductive.

“Her determination is admirable,” said Reem Asaad, a college lecturer in Jeddah who led a mostly online campaign to get female sales clerks in lingerie shops. “But I still don’t think she’s approached her Saudi audience in a way that is doable.

“She is demanding steps beyond what most women can do, like go to the airport [and try to travel without a guardian’s permission]. We all know the results and what the consequences are going to be; they will be sent back home.”

Many Saudis dislike Ms al Huwaider “because they believe she is out to air Saudi Arabia’s dirty laundry in front of the world”, Eman al Nafjan, an educator, wrote at the Saudi woman blog. “When I asked a group of my mother’s generation about her, they called her subversive, disobedient, and disloyal to her religion, family and country. They also felt bad for Huwaider’s parents.”

Ms al Nafjan added that when she told a group of women her own age who Ms al Huwaider was, “they shrugged their shoulders. I guess they are more aware of whatever they are currently showing on MBC 4”.

Ms al Nafjan herself believes that Ms al Huwaider should “be respected for her sacrifices”, she wrote on her blog, but concedes that the activist “most likely … won’t be appreciated and celebrated until my daughter’s generation”.

Many Saudi women argue that in a very conservative society, which places high value on privacy, discretion and behind-doors diplomacy, the preferred way to effect change is quiet, grass-roots activities.

There is no organised women’s “movement” in the kingdom, but many locally orientated groups are working to improve conditions for women. They offer such services as job training, financial assistance, computer literacy and business courses. Women also run a national programme for raising awareness about breast cancer.

In addition, women are becoming increasingly vocal about ending domestic violence, getting fairer treatment in divorce and setting a minimum marriage age. While none of these campaigns so far has resulted in legal reforms, many women say they see improvements, adding that change comes slowly to Saudi Arabia.

Ms al Huwaider, however, is in a hurry. And unlike her peers, she is openly challenging the underpinning of women’s legal status, which is the “guardianship” system. Under this regime, women must have permission from male guardians to travel, get an education, take a job, open a bank account and, in some instances, receive medical care.

The system is not a burden for women if their guardian – father, husband, brother or uncle – is kind and reasonable. But when he is not, a woman can be confined to her home, forbidden to work, travel or socialise with friends.

The Saudi government has chipped away at the system’s edges in recent years. For example, it no longer requires businesswomen with some types of companies to hire a male agent to deal with the government. It also has ruled that unaccompanied women may stay in hotels and furnished apartments.

Ms al Huwaider, however, finds the entire system unacceptable. It turns “women into prisoners from the day they are born until the day they die. They cannot leave their cells, namely their homes, or the larger prison, namely the state, without signed permission,” she once wrote at a liberal Arabic website, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri).

In the BBC interview, Ms al Huwaider said she began to see the restrictions on Saudi women differently when she was a student in the United States. “I realised … I can do things my government doesn’t allow me to do … and I should get my rights.”

When she returned to the kingdom, she said, “I saw how women are complaining all the time of certain laws and how they are suffering with their husbands or their fathers … [but] they just keep complaining between each other. I said … this will get us nowhere just talking to ourselves. So I decided to start writing.”

In 2003, she said, the Saudi press was told not to carry her columns. Security officials have twice warned her to stop public protests, and she told a Saudi interviewer in 2007 that she gets hate mail wishing she would contract a deadly disease or have a hand cut off.

Ms al Huwaider has paid a personal price for her campaigning. After it made her husband uncomfortable, the couple divorced. “Otherwise we had a very wonderful, good life together,” she told the BBC interviewer. ”I still consider him a very good friend.”

Ms al Huwaider’s latest scheme is to ask Saudi women to wear a black ribbon as a sign that “we’re not happy, we’re not satisfied [and] we deserve to be treated kindly”.

Unlike a public protest, she explained in an interview, “I thought this is very simple. To put something on their arm is not going to cause them much trouble.” She is also appealing to women in other countries to wear a ribbon “to show their support”.

With all her frustrations in Saudi Arabia, has she considered living elsewhere?

“It’s my country [and even] with all this darkness, I love it,” Ms al Huwaider said.

“I have something to give. I haven’t given up … Maybe I’ll leave when I reach that point. [But] I don’t want to reach it either.”

Morocco: New Bill Protecting Women from Abuse

2009-12-10T16:33:00.000-05:00

Minister of Social Development Family and Solidarity Nouzha Skalli announced yesterday, during the conference on the elimination of violence against women, the presentation of the long awaited bill that criminalizes violence against women. Skalli announced that the bill would be given to the Secretary General of Government in order to launch the legislative process by end of December. A bill that criminalizes violence against women was previously introduced three years ago but was withdrawn from Parliament by Minister Skalli who considered its components insufficient to condemn or curb violence against women. Skalli worked closely with Women Rights NGOs and jurists to prepare the new bill as an amendment to the penal code.

MENA: 2009 Report on Human Rights in the Arab Region

2009-12-09T16:34:00.000-05:00

http://www.cihrs.org/Images/ArticleFiles/Original/482.pdf

Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform
2009 Report on Human Rights in the Arab Region
Press Release
Today the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies released its second annual report on the state of human rights in the Arab world for the year 2009. The report, entitled Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of Reform, concludes that the human rights situation in the Arab region has deteriorated throughout the region over the last year.
The report reviews the most significant developments in human rights during 2009 in 12 Arab countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. It also devotes separate chapters to the Arab League and an analysis of the performance of Arab governments in UN human rights institutions. Another chapter addresses the stance of Arab governments concerning women's rights, the limited progress made to advance gender equality, and how Arab governments use the issue of women's rights to burnish their image before the international community while simultaneously evading democratic and human rights reform measures required to ensure dignity and equality for all of their citizens. .
The report observes the grave and ongoing Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, particularly the collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip through the ongoing blockade and the brutal invasion of Gaza at the beginning of 2009 which resulted in the killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians, 83 percent of them civilians not taking part in hostilities. The report notes that the plight of the Palestinian people has been exacerbated by the Fatah-Hamas conflict, which has turned universal rights and liberties into favors granted on the basis of political affiliation. Both parties have committed grave abuses against their opponents, including arbitrary detention, lethal torture, and extrajudicial killings.
The deterioration in Yemeni affairs may presage the collapse of what remains of the central state structure due to policies that give priority to the monopolization of power and wealth, corruption that runs rampant, and a regime that continues to deal with opponents using solely military and security means. As such, Yemen is now the site of a war in the northern region of Saada, a bloody crackdown in the south, and social and political unrest throughout the country. Moreover, independent press and human rights defenders who expose abuses in both the north and south are targets of increasingly harsh repression.
In its blatant contempt for justice, the Sudanese regime is the exemplar for impunity and the lack of accountability. President Bashir has refused to appear before the International Criminal Court in connection with war crimes in Darfur. Instead, his regime is hunting down anyone in the country who openly rejects impunity for war crimes, imprisoning and torturing them and shutting down rights organizations. Meanwhile the government's policy of collective punishment against the population of Darfur continues, as well as its evasion of responsibilities under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the north and south, making secession a more likely scenario, which may once again drag the country into a bloody civil war.
In Lebanon, the threat of civil war that loomed last year has receded, but the country still suffers from an entrenched two-tier power structure in which Hizbullah's superior military capabilities give the opposition an effective veto. As a result, the state's constitutional institutions have been paralyzed.
In this context it took several months for the clear winner in the parliamentary elections to form a government. Now, even after the formation of a government, the unequal military balance of power between the government and the opposition will prevent serious measures to guarantee all parties accountable before the law, and greatly undermine the possibility of delivering justice for the many crimes and abuses experienced by the Lebanese people over the last several years.
Although Iraq is still the largest arena of violence and civilian deaths, it witnessed a relative improvement in some areas, though these gains remain fragile. The death toll has dropped and threats against journalists are less frequent. In addition, some of the major warring factions have indicated they are prepared to renounce violence and engage in the political process.
In Egypt, as the state of emergency approaches the end of its third decade, the broad immunity given to the security apparatus has resulted in the killing of dozens of undocumented migrants, the use of lethal force in the pursuit of criminal suspects, and routine torture. Other signs of deterioration were visible in 2009: the emergency law was applied broadly to repress freedom of expression, including detaining or abducting bloggers. Moreover, the Egyptian police state is increasingly acquiring certain theocratic features, which have reduced some religious freedoms, and have lead to an unprecedented expansion of sectarian violence within the country.
In Tunisia, the authoritarian police state continued its unrestrained attacks on political activists, journalists, human rights defenders, trade unionists, and others involved in social protest. At the same time, the political stage was prepared for the reelection of President Ben Ali through the introduction of constitutional amendments that disqualified any serious contenders.
In Algeria, the emergency law, the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, and the application of counterterrorism measures entrenched policies of impunity, grave police abuses, and the undermining of accountability and freedom of expression. Constitutional amendments paved the way for the installment of President Bouteflika as president for life amid elections that were contested on many levels, despite the lack of real political competition.
Morocco, unfortunately, has seen a tangible erosion of the human rights gains achieved by Moroccans over the last decade. A fact most clearly seen in the failure if the government to adopt a set of institutional reforms within the security and judicial sectors intended to prevent impunity for crimes. Morocco's relatively improved status was also undermined by the intolerance shown for freedom of expression, particularly for expression touching on the king or the royal family, or instances of institutional corruption. Protests against the status of the Moroccan-administered Western Sahara region were also repressed and several Sahrawi activists were referred to a military tribunal for the first time in 14 years.
As Syria entered its 47th year of emergency law, it continued to be distinguished by its readiness to destroy all manner of political opposition, even the most limited manifestations of independent expression. The Kurdish minority was kept in check by institutionalized discrimination, and human rights defenders were targets for successive attacks. Muhannad al-Hassani, the president of the Sawasiyah human rights organization, was arrested and tried, and his attorney, Haitham al-Maleh, the former chair of the Syrian Human Rights Association, was referred to a military tribunal. The offices of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression were shut down, and Syrian prisons still hold dozens of prisoners of conscience and democracy advocates.
In Bahrain, the systematic discrimination against the Shiite majority was accompanied by more repression of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Human rights defenders increasingly became targets for arrest, trial, and smear campaigns. Some human rights defenders were even subjected by government agents to threats and intimidation while in Europe.
In Saudi Arabia, the report notes that the Monarch's speeches urging religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue abroad have not been applied inside the Kingdom, where the religious police continue to clamp down on personal freedom. Indeed, repression of religious freedoms is endemic, and the Shiite minority continues to face systematic discrimination. Counterterrorism policies were used to justify long-term arbitrary detention, and political activists advocating reform were tortured. These policies also undermined judicial standards, as witnessed by the prosecution of hundreds of people in semi-secret trials over the last year.
In tandem with these grave abuses and the widespread lack of accountability for such crimes within Arab countries, the report notes that various Arab governments and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have been working in concert within UN institutions to undermine international mechanisms and standards for the protection of human rights. On this level, Arab governments have sought to undercut provisions that bring governments to account or seriously assess and monitor human rights. This is most clearly illustrated by the broad attack on independent UN human rights experts and NGOs working within the UN, as well as attempts to legalize international restrictions on freedom of expression through the pretext of prohibiting "defamation of religions."
In the same vein, the Arab League and its summit forums offered ongoing support for the Bashir regime in Sudan despite charges of war crimes, and members of the organization used the principle of national sovereignty as a pretext to remain silent about or even collaborate on grave violations in several Arab states. Little hope should be invested in the Arab League as a protector of human rights regionally. Indeed, the Arab Commission on Human Rights, created by the Arab Charter on Human Rights (a weak document compared to other regional charters), is partially composed of government officials, and the secretariat of the Arab League has begun to take measures to weaken the Commission, including obstructing the inclusion of NGOs in its work, intentionally undermining its ability to engage in independent action, even within the stifling constraints laid out by the charter.

http://www.cihrs.org/Images/ArticleFiles/Original/484.pdf
Full report in Arabic:
http://www.cihrs.org/Images/ArticleFiles/Original/482.pdf

UAE: Changing the image of women

2009-12-06T16:36:00.000-05:00

By Steven Stanek, Foreign Correspondent

WASHINGTON // By anyone’s measure, Masara Y Alameri is a successful woman. She earned a master’s degree in material science and engineering from UAE University, rose through the ranks of the Abu Dhabi Municipalities and Agriculture Department, and now serves as the leading urban planner for Masdar City.

Last week Ms Alameri set out, along with a delegation of other accomplished Emirati women, on a trip to the US capital, hoping not only to showcase their achievements but change a perception some in Washington have of women in the Middle East: that they are treated as second-class citizens and lack the same opportunities as men.

“There are some who maybe have not visited us or maybe not read enough about us to really acknowledge what we are about,” said Ms Alameri, who also oversees landscaping for Masdar City and is responsible for ensuring that all its projects are carbon-neutral.
“They’ve been surprised about the amount of progress that we’ve been able to reach … the way the woman has been respected, acknowledged, pushed and supported by our leaders.”

The delegation, sponsored by the UAE Embassy, was billed as the first all-female delegation from the Emirates to visit the United States.

The other delegates were Sheikha Hind Al Qassimi, chairwoman of the Emirates Business Women Council; Sheikha Khulood Saqer Al Qassimi, director of the Department for Curriculum and Instructional Materials Development at the Ministry of Education; Najwa Mohammed Alhosani, an assistant professor at UAE University; Shayma Fawwaz, director of international investments at Dubai International Financial Centre; and Maryam Matar, director general of the Dubai Community Development Authority.
The delegation shuttled between conferences at think tanks and NGOs and met two US legislators: Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat and the first woman to be elected as both governor and US senator; and Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Illinois and a leading advocate of women’s issues.

Last Monday the delegation met Melanne Verveer, who was appointed by the US president Barack Obama as ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues.
“We were impressed by the breadth of fields in which women in the UAE now participate,” said a spokesperson at the office of global women’s issues at the US State Department.

For Dr Alhosani, the meetings with top female legislators offered an insight into “how American women leaders have pushed their way into very prestigious positions”.

Just 10 months ago, Dr Alhosani earned her doctorate in education from Kansas State University. “When I lived [in the US], I never saw myself as far away from US women,” she said. “We share the same interests, the same passion, the same lifestyle.”
Women are guaranteed equal rights under the UAE constitution and have made great strides in recent years.

Three quarters of graduates from UAE universities are women and there are nine female members of the Federal National Council, according to a government report released last year.

Four women serve in the UAE Cabinet and the first female member of the judiciary, Judge Khulood al Dhaheri, was sworn in last year.
Two female pilots recently became the first to graduate from Etihad Airways’ cadet programme, and four female fighter pilots serve in the UAE Air Force, according to Yousef al Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the US, who highlighted the achievements of Emirati women in a speech last week at the UAE Embassy in Washington.

The delegates said they hoped their visit would highlight their progress to an American audience, whose view of women in the Middle East was skewed by frequent news coverage of less tolerant countries such as Iran and Afghanistan.
“Women are not asking for rights in the UAE right now, they are practising them,” said Ms Fawwaz. “We’ve travelled many years ahead of many other countries in the region.”

“We succeeded in changing some of the impressions and misconceptions about the United Arab Emirates in general in this country,” said Sheikha Hind.

“We hope we succeeded in showing the right portrayal of Emirati women.”

sstanek@thenational.ae

MENA: 30% of bloggers are women

2009-12-01T16:37:00.000-05:00

According to Eleana Gordon, founder of the Center for Liberty in the Middle East, presenting its latest initiative, the Institute of Online Activism at the World e-Democracy Forum in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Paris), 30 % of bloggers in the Middle East are women. The Institute allows women in the Middle East access to tools to "turn their dreams into action for change." Her speech illustrates the rise of e-democracy in this region.

The Center for Liberty in the Middle East (Clime) is a nonprofit organization that supports defenders of democratic values of freedom and tolerance in the Middle East. Through its network of activists across the region, CLIME advocates a peaceful transition of political systems that protect individual liberties, allow the full political participation and respect of ethnic pluralism, religious and political.

Eleana Gordon is also founder of "Online Activism Institute", whose goal is to teach activism through e*learning, activist videos and virtual mentoring. After a year of development, it launched in 2009 in Egypt and Jordan with training for 90 women on its flagship online course, "Create Your Activism Plan."

The Online Activism Institute is a consortium of NGOs, web-development, and academic partners in the Middle East and United States, who work together to provide state-of the-art training and resources through an e-learning platform. The consortium is based in Cairo, Amman and Washington, D.C. with plans to expand to more locations in the future. The Online Activism Institute is funded through the U.S. Department of State's Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). MEPI supports efforts to foster reform throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

http://www.edemocracy-forum.com/2009/11/internet-tool-for-training-in-democratic-practices-.html

Bahrain: Women still a target for brutality

2009-11-25T11:28:00.001-05:00

By Mazen Mahdi, Foreign Correspondent

Bahraini female officers take part in yesterday's graduation ceremony at the UN House in Manama. Mazen Mahdi / The National

MANAMA // Mixed assessments about the extent of discrimination and violence against women in Bahrain were offered yesterday as the country marked the 10th anniversary of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
“I’m optimistic about the prospects of addressing this issue across the Gulf states,” Dr Banna Bazaboun, the head of the Manama-based Batelco Care Centre for Family Violence Cases (BCCFVC) said following a graduation ceremony for a new police officers who had been trained with the United Nations’ help to deal with such cases.

“The efforts are no longer limited to the civil society, but they have expanded to encompass the government and official levels who are seeking to tackle this issue by improving their policing and court systems,” Dr Bazaboun said.

She added that across the Gulf serious efforts were being made to combat violence against women by taking preventive steps and raising awareness. She mentioned Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar as places where significant progress has been made.

Her optimism was not shared by the Bahrain Human Rights Society (BHRS), which released its annual report yesterday, painting a much less hopeful picture of the situation in the country because of unfulfilled legislative commitments and continued reports of human trafficking.

The report criticized the government for not fulfilling its international commitments to treaties protecting women’s rights that it had ratified and for not allowing the human rights groups and civic organizations to play a bigger rule in drafting legislations and recommendations addressing women’s rights.

A study carried out by the Bahraini Supreme Council for Women (SCW) in 2006 found that violence against women was carried out mainly by their husbands (89.8 per cent), followed by their brothers (18.4 per cent fathers (16.2 per cent), strangers (6.8 per cent). Other relatives were responsible for the remaining violence perpetrated against Bahraini women, according to the study.

Women’s rights in the region have received renewed attention during the past three years, after several Gulf and Middle East countries – including Bahrain – were identified by the US state department’s annual human trafficking report as states that tolerate the practice.

The Bahraini government had rejected the claims, but has since embarked on legislative reforms, carried out law enforcement operations and taken part in joint civic and international efforts to address the issue of women’s rights.

The BHRS report welcomed the adoption of an anti-human trafficking law in Bahrain last year, but expressed reservations over the fact that the law did not call for compensation for the victims. It also said that trafficking in people was still taking place and that most of the victims were women from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and some Arab countries that were either contracted or misled into working in nightclubs and bars.

The BCCFVC, which opened in 2007, claims to be the first of its kind, a specialised centre in the Arab world to offer preventive and therapy services for victims of family violence. According to the centre’s figures, it has dealt with 6,016 cases in the past two years.

Dr Bazaboun said 10,045 people had so far benefited from the centre’s direct awareness seminars and services since they began operating at the centre, while it continues to carry out awareness campaigns in the media alongside its specialised training.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, on Tuesday pushed the UN drive to combat violence against women even further by introducing a new initiative.

“Today I launched a Network of Men Leaders who will support the UNiTE [to End Violence Against Women] campaign and act as role models for men and boys everywhere. Members of the Network will work to raise public awareness, advocate for adequate laws, and meet with young men and boys,” Mr Ban said in New York.

He said that up to 70 per cent of women, at some point in their lifetime, experienced physical or sexual violence by men. Most suffered at the hands of their husbands, partners or someone they know.

“This means men have a crucial role to play in ending such violence as fathers, friends, decision makers, and community and opinion leaders,” he said.

Dr Bazaboun, who has carried out specialised training for police officers in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, as well as in Bahrain, also emphasised the importance of men participating in the training and awareness seminars, as they represented the other part of the equation in the cycle of violence.

“It is important to have men play a role in combating violence against women. Three quarters of our board is made up of men at the BCCFVC, and at the centre we train policemen and policewomen side by side because they whole society should be involved in this effort,” she said.

mmahdi@thenational.ae

MENA: Sheikha Alyaziah bint Saif heads delegation to Rome NAM First Ladies Summit

2009-11-16T16:47:00.000-05:00

Sheikha Alyaziah bint Saif al Nahyan, wife of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Nahyan UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs today concludes a two day trip to Rome to attend the second Non-Aligned Movement First Ladies Summit on the subject of food security and women's access to resources.

Sheikha Alyaziah was representing Sheikha Fatimah bint Mubarak, first lady of the UAE at the conference in which the UAE submitted a speech that urged the need for global action to combat hunger worldwide and ensure women's access to resources.

Sheikha Alyaziah's speech highlighted that the issue of food security is one that goes to the very heart of the challenges that face the world today. "It is intimately connected with a whole host of other issues - like climate change, the conservation of our natural environment, population growth, poverty and education. And, of course, it is also related to the allocation of global economic resources between North and South and how they are managed." The UAE submission also praised the continued support of UAE President Sheikh Khalifah bin Zayed al Nahyan in empowering women and ensuring their equal access to resources. A core part of the UAE's policy focuses on giving aid to countries around the world, in particular for building up infrastructure and contributing to irrigation and education projects.

The meeting, timed to take place on the sidelines of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization summit (FAO) will present its recommendations to the FAO World Food summit over the coming two days.
During the two-day summit, Sheikha Alyazia held bilateral meetings with a number of first ladies including Suzanne Mubarak of Egypt, Hero Talabani of Iraq and Leila Ben Ali of Tunisia in which discussions were held on a number of issues of mutual interest and co-operation.

The UAE delegation, headed by Sheikha Alyaziah included Noura al Suwaidi, Director-General of the General Women's Union, Ambassador Abdulaziz Al Shamsi, UAE ambassador to Italy, Lana Nusseibeh, Director of Research at the Ministry of State for the Federal National Council, Fatimah al Amri, Director of Public Relations at the General Women's Union, Rowda al Otaiba and Alya al Shehhi from the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Rome,16 Nov, 2009 (WAM)

Yemen: Islah party lacks unity and clear platform

2009-11-13T16:49:00.000-05:00

A volatile mix of competing factions within Yemen’s major Islamist party is preventing the group from developing a clear platform. Tribal, Muslim Brotherhood, and Salafi elements within the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah) has led to a lack of unity and hampered the party’s performance, explains Amr Hamzawy in a new paper.

Originally an ally of the ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) and a junior member in the government following the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, Islah joined the opposition in 1997 in protest over the government’s lack of progress on democratic reforms. It has continued to switch sides on key policy issues between the ruling party and the opposition ever since.

Key Conclusions:
• Although Islah has emerged as the strongest opposition group in Yemen, it has failed to secure any major legislative accomplishments since leaving the ruling coalition in 1997.
• Islah emphasizes peaceful political participation. It recognizes the rights of secular movements and supports democracy as compatible with Islam. Islah has also democratized its internal procedures and decision-making processes.
• Since moving into the opposition, Islah, which started its political participation calling for the Islamization of state and society, has focused less on religious and moral legislation, instead prioritizing political, social, and economic reforms.
• Like many Arab Islamist movements, Islah has created religious, charitable, and educational institutions to enlarge its base by delivering social services.
• To counter Islah’s growing strength, the GPC has sought to deepen the rifts between Islah’s various factions, and to limit the group’s control over mosques.
• Yemeni Salafis are skeptical of democratic participation, but continue to view Islah as their best available option, and have voted for its candidates in recent presidential and local elections.

“Although Islah’s long-standing internal divisions have hindered the party’s parliamentary prospects, more than anything, the concentration of power in the hands of President Saleh and the ruling GPC has stifled its legislative success,” Hamzawy cautions. “At this level, the experience of Islamists in Yemen corresponds to the wider regional pattern of Islamist parties and movements, which have proven ineffective in opposition to authoritarian regimes.”

MENA: Middle East Youth Initiative Study

2009-11-12T16:50:00.000-05:00

By the Dubai School of Government and Brookings Wolfensohn Center

The demographic transition being experienced in the Middle East is leading to high unemployment and social exclusion, making it one of the most critical economic development challenges in the region, research on the Middle East's youth has found.
The research, entitled Generation in Waiting: The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East, was launched at the Dubai School of Government (DSG) on Monday.
With over 100 million people between the ages of 15 and 29, the Middle East has the largest youth cohort in the history of the region, according to the research.
It is a project by the Middle East Youth Initiative, a joint program between the Dubai School of Government and the Wolfensohn Center at the Washington DC-based Brookings Institution, and is packed with statistics and is targeted for policy-makers in the region.
It has been edited by DSG dean Dr Taiq Yousef and Nivtej Dhillon, former policy director at the Middle East Youth Initiative.

Foreword by Anwar Gargash [UAE State Minister]
Specifically focusing on Iran, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Yemen, the research included a foreword by Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs, and James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank.
Dr Yousef said that the research showed that the "most important segment in the region is not to be taken for granted", referring to the Middle East's youth.
He also criticized the region's governments for not giving youths due attention, saying the weakest ministries in the region were those dealing with youth matters, that they were also the most underfunded and lacked a political mandate.
The research found that while more of today's youth are educated in comparison to previous generations, the quality of the education in the region is poor and does not qualify them for the private sector, leading many to rely heavily on the already saturated government sectors.
The phenomenon, said Dr Yousef, coupled with low quality, low paid jobs and a lack of social protection is leading the region's youth to get married later in life, which he said was unusual for a conservative region as the Middle East. Marriage as an institution, he added, was under "assault".
According to the research, nearly 50 per cent of males between the ages of 25 and 29 are unmarried. "The marriage market is closely linked with the employment market, the education market, and the housing market," says the study.
Tip of the iceberg
Unemployment, said Mary Kawar of the International Labor Organization was "the tip of the iceberg" in the difficulties facing the region's youth. Young people in the region, she said, faced problems making the transition from school to the workplace.
"80 to 90 per cent of young people in the countries we surveyed had an unsuccessful transition," she said. The "unsuccessful" classification, she said, included those that had taken jobs that they were unhappy with, or "non-career jobs".
"A lot of young Arabs choose to be unemployed because they want to have good jobs," she said.
Nader Qabbani, of the Syria Trust for Development, compared the value of education in job markets between the Arab world and the rest of the world, saying that an extra year of education amounted to a 10 to 15 per cent extra annual income on a global level. "In the Arab world, an extra year would bring six per cent, and in Syria, three per cent," he said.
Ahmed Younis, a consultant at pollster Gallup, painted a bleak picture of the state of the region's youth through statistics. Vast majorities of Arab youths believe that corruption is widespread in the private sector and many believe that having wasta [influence] is the best way to get a job in the region, and most are not willing to relocate for a job, even within their own country.
Dr Yousef said it was refreshing to learn that the research project was not approached from a security perspective.
"In Washington, most [such] discussions were couched in terms of national security, terrorism and counter terrorism… They would say who is going to be the next [Osama] Bin Laden, and how do we stop him… This [research] is refocusing the angle to where the crux is," he said.

MENA: World Bank Governance Indicators

2009-11-08T16:56:00.000-05:00

Source: World Bank

UAE: Sheikha Fatima visits shelter for victims of human trafficking, donates AED 1 million

2009-11-08T16:52:00.000-05:00

Abu Dhabi, 8 Nov. 2009 (WAM) - H.H. Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, Chairwoman of the General Women's Union and Supreme President of the Family Development Foundation today visited the centre for sheltering women and children who are victims of human trafficking which operates under the umbrella of the UAE Red Crescent Authority.

Sheikha Fatima donated AED 1 million to help the victims regain their normal lives.

Sheikha Fatima was received at the centre by Sara Shuhail, Executive Director of the centers and the women working there.

Sheikha Fatima, who was accompanied by Dr Maitha Al Shamsi, Minister of State, was briefed on the conditions of the victims. She talked to the victims and comforted them. She also reassured them that the centre was created to shelter and to protect them.

She reiterated UAE's rejection of such terrible crimes committed against innocent women and children and expressed support to all efforts to guarantee their financial and morale rights.

Sheikha Fatima toured the centre's different sections and praised the levels of services offered to the victims of human trafficking.

UAE: Women muftis by end of 2010

2009-11-03T16:58:00.000-05:00

DUBAI // The UAE will appoint what are likely to be the world’s first state-sanctioned female muftis next year, after the Grand Mufti announced details yesterday of plans to recruit and train them.

Six Emirati women are being considered for the training programme, said Dr Ahmed al Haddad, who is also the head of the Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department. Once accepted they will begin the course, which will last several months, early next year.
The move follows a fatwa issued by Dr al Haddad in February that sanctioned women’s role as muftis. In May, he called on qualified Emirati women to apply for the programme, which includes instruction in Sharia law and legal thinking.

“We continue to accept new applicants until we begin the training,” said Dr al Haddad. “It is already part of the 2010 budget.”

The status of female muftis has caused controversy within the religious establishment elsewhere in the Muslim world, with Egypt’s Al Azhar University, a powerful centre of Sunni scholarship, rejecting the possibility of women becoming grand muftis.
However, Dr al Haddad said that debate did not affect whether women should serve in other roles.

“The controversy over female muftis is not necessarily over this point, but about whether or not a woman should be appointed as the grand mufti of a state,” he said. “And that is not what we’re trying to do at this point.”

The move is part of a broader push to recruit and train Emiratis to the department, especially in the role of advising and issuing decrees on religious matters.
They will be instructed according to the Maliki school of jurisprudence, one of four in the Sunni tradition and the one followed in the UAE. Instructors are typically from academic and religious institutions, including practising muftis.

Although women currently serve as religious advisers at the Abu Dhabi fatwa centre, their role is limited to advising women on “women’s issues”. The Dubai move would mark the first time women have acted as muftis on a par with their male counterparts.
In February 2008, the Egyptian family court appointed Amal Soliman as the first female Islamic notary with the ability to perform marriages and divorces. Her duties were not equal to those of a mufti.

Dr al Haddad, who has five daughters, one of whom is a student of Sharia, said his fatwa earlier this year was based on Islamic tradition, which he said was “rich in examples of highly learned women acting as muftis and issuing decrees on all matters”.
“A woman who is learned and trained in issuing fatwas is not limited in her role to issuing fatwas that relate to women only, but rather she is qualified to issue on matters of worship, jurisprudence, morality and behaviour,” he said.

He referred to a Quranic verse to support his decree that Islamic tradition has always sanctioned women to act as muftis on all matters that concern society.

A fatwa, or religious decree, is in effect a legal opinion derived from the Quran, hadith or precedents in the Islamic tradition.
“Evidence points to the fact that women too can order acts of virtue and ban acts of vice just like a man can,” he said, referring to the basic tenement of a mufti’s role.

“And of course she can do that only with acquired scholarship and training, which is what female contemporaries of the Prophet have done as well as the women who came after them.” (The National, Nov. 03, 2009)

UAE: GWU launches legal rights awareness drive for women's

2009-11-03T16:54:00.000-05:00

WAM Abu Dhabi

A two month program was launched today by the General Women's Union (GWU) to educate women about their legal rights and build their capacity to defend these vested constitutional rights.

Being organized by the GWU in conjunction with the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the ''Know Your Rights'' program will feature a series of 12 workshops to familiarize women leaders from government ministries and departments with international laws and conventions on rights of women, in addition to a bundle of UAE laws like the personal status code, and laws on civil service and labor. These activities will shed light on provisions enshrined in the UAE constitution in regards to personal status code, and laws of labor and human resources.

GWU Director General Noura Al Suweidi said ''The program seeks to raise awareness standard of women about their vested rights guaranteed by the UAE constitution and laws and build their capacity to defend their legal rights.

In today's workshop held at the GWU premises, Dr Mohammed Abdul Rahim of College of Law, UAE University, lectured about 40 women leaders on rights and duties of women in the view of the the personal status code.

Kuwait: 'Freedom' for Kuwait women

2009-10-21T16:59:00.000-04:00

http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=ODg1MjU0ODQ0
B Izaak, Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Constitutional Court yesterday issued a landmark ruling by abrogating an article in the 1962 passports law that banned Kuwaiti women from obtaining their own passports without the prior approval of their husbands.
The ruling, which is final and cannot be appealed, said that the article in the law violates a number of articles in the constitution, especially articles 29, 30 and 31 which guarantee personal freedom. In the ruling, the court also stated that under the constitution, women right to travel cannot be denied by anyone including their husbands because this is one of their basic rights in the constitution.

Female MP Aseel Al-Awadhi welcomed the ruling as a victory for the constitution and democracy in Kuwait, adding that it has eliminated a long injustice against Kuwaiti women. She said that she will work to amend all laws passed by the previous National Assemblies which are in violation of the constitution.

The ruling was triggered when a Kuwaiti woman sued her husband kept her passport and those of their three children and refused to give them. The court ordered the man to give the passports. The constitutional court also said that husbands cannot prevent their wives from travelling without a court order and only when they prove that their travel undermines the interest of both parties.

In another development, the battle for bank loans relief was officially launched yesterday after a number of MPs filed a request to convene a special session to debate the issue on November 17. The request however will be discussed in the assembly's opening session of the new term on October 27 or in early November.

It was signed by MP Saadoun Hammad and nine other MPs, according to Hammad but many more MPs are likely to sign later. The request calls on the assembly's financial and economic affairs committee to study a number of draft laws on the issue and submit its report to the assembly latest by November 10.

The bills call for the government to purchase all existing personal loans on Kuwaiti citizens and then reschedule their repayment over many years after scrapping all interest. The government has so far rejected the bills saying it was ready to increase the capital of a KD500-million fund established last year to help defaulters.

Finance Minister Mustafa Al-Shamali has said that the amount of the loans and interest is KD6 billion and any purchase or write-off will be highly expensive and harmful for national economy. Latest available official figures show that 278,000 Kuwaitis are debtors and around two percent of them are facing problems repaying. Supporters of the debt relief claim to have the support of at least 30 lawmakers, insisting that they will push through the draft law and pass in the assembly.

However MPs supporting the bills have blasted Shamali and threatened to grill him in the assembly over the issue. Islamist-tribal MP Daifallah Buramia yesterday strongly criticized the minister and threatened that he will use his "constitutional tools" against the minister if he does not change his position.

MPs have claimed that around 100,000 Kuwaiti debtors are facing legal action, including arrest, for being unable to repay, and held the finance ministry and the central bank responsible for the crisis. The issue is likely to snowball into a major flashpoint between the government and MPs during the next term unless an acceptable compromise was reached.

UAE: First Etihad Emirati women cadet pilots graduate

2009-10-19T17:00:00.000-04:00

WAM Abu Dhabi, 19 Oct. 2009
Etihad Airways' first female Emirati cadet pilots - Salma Al-Baloushi and Aisha Al-Mansouri - have successfully graduated from flight training alongside nine male colleagues and gained their airline transport pilot license (ATPL).

The cadet pilots, Etihad's second group to graduate, were conferred with their flying wings in a ceremony at the airline's training academy which was attended by family and friends as well as senior management from Etihad Airways and the Horizon International Flight Academy.

Joining Salma and Aisha to receive their wings were Ali Al Farsi, Ahmed Balalaa, Ibrahim Sanqoor, Khalid Al Ali, Mohamed Al Kaabi, Khalid Al Marzouqi, Khalil Amiri, Abdalla Balkhashar and Hasan Abdulla.

James Hogan, Etihad Airways' chief executive, said: "Everyone at Etihad is delighted that Salma and Aisha - our first female cadet pilots - have made history as the first women to graduate from the program.

"Salma and Aisha are a key part of Etihad's expanding female pilot community and we wish them, as well as their male colleagues, the best of luck as they enter the next phase of their careers with Etihad." The cadets started the pilot program course in September 2007 and now have the rank of second officers at Etihad Airways.

As second officers the pilots will undertake a multi-crew co-operation course and an Airbus A320 type conversion course which will enable them to fly as co-pilots on the Etihad Airways Airbus A320 short haul fleet.

The cadet pilots will spend much of the time during the type conversion course in Etihad's A320 full-flight simulator as well as training in the development of non-technical skills applicable to working in a multi-crew environment. After approximately six months they complete their final checks and will qualify as A320 first officers.

In order to gain the frozen ATPL the cadet pilots had to complete 750 hours of classroom tuition and 205 hours of flight training in single and multi-engine aircraft. During this time they all passed the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority's theoretical knowledge and flying exams.

Etihad Airways recently welcomed the 100th cadet pilot to its innovative and expanding flying program. Shareefa Al Bloushi is a member of Etihad's tenth group of cadets. She is also the sixth female Emirati cadet pilot to join the program, and eighth female overall.

In addition to the cadet pilot program, Etihad Airways' Emiratisation initiatives focus on two other streams which include the technical engineering development program and graduate management development program.

Etihad now also has two international cadet pilot courses which run alongside the five Emirati courses at Horizon Academy. The two groups contain 24 cadet pilots from countries around the world including Hungary, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia: Saudi activists renew calls for setting up women's clubs

2009-10-14T17:03:00.000-04:00

Clash continues between conservative and liberal elements as doctor warns of rising obesity and heart ailments in the absence of such facilities in the country.

By Abdul Rahman Shaheen, Correspondent, Gulf News

Riyadh: A number of Saudi cultural figures and members of the Shoura Council renewed their demand to the General Presidency for Youth Welfare to set up women's clubs supervised by women.

"The Presidency should be compelled to set up women's clubs across the Kingdom in full compliance with a Shoura Council decision taken several years ago but never implemented," they said.

Speaking to Gulf News, they lamented that recommendations of the council were not binding to the executing authority.

While urging the Ministry of Education to introduce physical education at girls' schools, they called for steps to silence the hardliners, who want to take society backward.

Absence

Noting the absence of any woman representative in the General Presidency for Youth Welfare, Dr Abdullah Al Feefi, a member of the Shoura Council, said the Presidency was not paying any heed to the directives made by the Council to set up women's clubs under the supervision of women and in full compliance with Sharia.

"It should be made obligatory for the Presidency to introduce a wide variety of cultural activities for women," he said.

On his part, Abdul Rahman Al Shalash, a prominent Saudi writer, noted that there are some people, who are fighting against practising of sports by women even at home.

They think any sports activity by woman is the beginning of evil and disintegration as well as stripping off their modesty and morality.

"All these were based not on any substantial evidence either from the Quran or Sunnah [Tradition of the Prophet]," he said.

"They should be bold enough to come forward with proof, if any, to the effect that Islam has prohibited sports for women," he said.

According to Al Shalash, the increased moves to clampdown on women's sports have resulted in a sharp decline in the number of sports centres in major Saudi cities.

"This has prompted many women to go for a stroll, either in the company of other women or alone, at the major pedestrian paths or at commercial markets," he noted.

Sulaiman Al Zayidi, another member of the Shoura Council, said several women are seen strolling on pedestrian paths every evening in full public view.

"Is it not strange to allow women to continue this practice and at the same time, preventing them from doing the same inside the premises of their schools and universities under the supervision of their female teachers as part of a health education curriculum, and not allowing them to set up women's clubs?" he asked.

Warning

It is noteworthy that three senior Islamic scholars — Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Barak, Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi and Abdullah Al Jabreen — issued a statement earlier, slamming those who call for setting up of women's clubs.

"Allah will punish such offenders. Setting up of such clubs will lead to spreading immorality and perversion," they warned.

On the other hand, the lone woman minister of Saudi Arabia, Noura Al Fayez, who is in charge of the girl's education portfolio under the Ministry of Education, gave hints in an earlier press statement about introducing sports at girls' schools.

"A decision is yet to be taken on the matter," she said.

Meanwhile, health experts warned against a huge rise in cases of obesity among women in the absence of facilities for physical exercise.

Dr Hani Najm, president of Saudi Cardiology Society, said that the average cases of obesity among Saudi women reached between 50 and 74 per cent in 2005 and it would reach more than 75 per cent by 2015 in the absence of providing outlets for women to exercise.

MENA: Women, bloggers & gays lead change in the Arab World

2009-10-14T16:39:00.002-04:00

October 14, 2009

Octavia Nasr BIOAC360° ContributorCNN Senior Editor, Mideast Affairs

The Arab Middle East teaches minorities some tough life lessons and shapes them in ways that might surprise you. While the effect of a conservative patriarchal society is expected to keep people under the thumb of tradition, culture and tribal and religious beliefs - sometimes too much oppression and control yields opposite results.

Having lived in several parts of the Middle East as a child, I learned that a woman doesn’t exist except as someone’s daughter, sister, wife or mother. Her opinion is not required, her emotions don’t count and she has no rights whatsoever – except those granted to her by a male.

With a few recent exceptions, an Arab woman’s testimony is not accepted in court. Most Arab women can’t travel outside their countries without permission from a male guardian, and most Arab women still can’t give nationality to their children. In Saudi Arabia women are not even allowed to drive cars. A popular Arabic saying describes it best: a good woman “has a mouth that eats but not one that speaks.”

The Arab Middle East taught me that sexual expression is exclusive to men. Men can have pre-marital sex, and when they’re married, their extra-marital affairs are ignored, justified or blamed on the wives. Their bodies are their own to do with them what they want. A woman’s body, however, represents her family’s honor. So, girls and women are expected to cover their bodies and repress their sexual feelings to protect the honor of the family.

This is such a deeply-rooted belief that, to this day, girls and women are killed by fathers, brothers or cousins at the suspicion of sexual activity. Even if a girl or woman is the victim of rape or assault, she can be killed under the pretext of “cleansing the family’s honor.” The practice known as “Honor Killing” is still common among all religions in the Middle East; it is even justified under the law and carries no penalty.

As someone who grew up and spent my early adulthood in the Middle East, I also learned that men run the show and they run it for life. Imagine that with the exception of a few, all Arab leaders haven’t changed since I was a child; and those who died were replaced by their sons. So far, the customary behavior has been such that if you wanted change, you had to ask men for their permission, their blessing, their support, their approval, their orders, and their actions to bring that change.

The women in my family were very active in the women’s rights movement of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Men listened to them, gave them a forum to express their desire to become equal through conferences, speeches and occasional articles in the media. They even gave them some rights – like the right to vote in some countries and the right to run for office in others. But, women’s rights were always controlled by men’s approval and that didn’t go far at all. As a matter of fact, a quick look at the Arab Middle East shows you that with very few exceptions it remains a region controlled by the ruling few who are unwilling to relinquish power. They resist change as if it were a contagious disease that will lead to their demise if they ever catch it.

Enter the age of the computer and the Internet, the age of blogging and connecting with the world. The only age that will allow a Saudi female cartoonist to draw pictures depicting how a woman feels when her husband takes on a second or third wife. It simply rips her heart out she draws.

Islam accepts polygamy and blesses it with a caveat which men enthusiastic about the practice tend to ignore. You can take multiple wives, but “if you want to be fair, marry only one,” the holy Muslim book guides. While not many in Saudi Arabia might care about how Hana Hajjar feels, a whole world outside the kingdom, is paying attention, supporting and perhaps even lending a hand.

The online traffic we witnessed in the aftermath of Iran’s contested elections and the outpour of support Iranian reformists received through social media are perfect examples of the effect of international support on local activism. In the case of Iran, it energized and helped spread the message to far reaching corners of the world.

Other stories that have captured the world’s attention are bloggers jailed in Egypt and Saudi Arabia for speaking up against the Status Quo in their countries and demanding social justice and political reform. We are learning about what’s going on inside the most conservative and most police-controlled countries in the region through bloggers who are not allowing the intimidation of prison, harassment or abuse to silence them.

It is obvious now there is a growing number of Arabs, men and women, who not only want change but they are willing to get to that change on their own. They grew tired of demanding it and not receiving anything in return, so they made the decision to truly become the change and live it in practice.

Now, you have bloggers like Wael Abbas in Egypt who openly criticizes President Hosni Mubarak’s policies and screams out slurs against his country’s secret police that detains him for hours and confiscates his laptop without any explanation or apology whatsoever.
You also have the gay and lesbian Middle Eastern community publishing their online magazine which deals with issues they find important. They discuss sexual orientation out in the open and provide a voice and an outlet they wouldn’t have even dreamed of a few years ago. Their headlines read, “Who we sleep with is nobody’s business” and “Homophobia and Paranoia: Words that Ryhme.”

The Lebanese Association of Women Researchers ‘Bahithat’ just organized what is dubbed a cornerstone of Arab Feminism through a conference at the American University of Beirut. Women from all over the Middle East - including Iraq and Iran - were there promoting the idea that “change will have to be imposed not demanded anymore” says Lebanese Feminist Zeina Zaatari, one of the most vocal voices at the conference.

The Feminist Collective promoted the event online through social networking sites such as Twitter. They drew the world’s attention to hear the voices of powerful women who gave themselves the right instead of waiting for officials to give them permission to speak or express themselves. Zaatari captured the limelight as she linked a woman’s equality with a woman’s sexual freedom and sexual expression. “A woman can’t be free if she doesn’t own her body and has full control of it and if she doesn’t express her sexuality,” she told me in a phone interview from Beirut.

The December 2008 Issue of Jasad.

Another example of women taking matters into their own hands is a quarterly magazine called ‘Jasad’ which means ‘Body’ in Arabic. It’s a racy magazine that was launched by a woman in Lebanon at the end of 2008 dealing with the female body and its deepest sexual desires. ‘Jasad’ is banned and its website is blocked from many Arab countries.

“This doesn’t stop subscriptions from being delivered by courier mail,” founder and editor-in-chief Joumana Haddad told me as she was busily preparing the fifth issue. She says the magazine is doing well despite the fact that “no one dares to advertize” in it. She talks about threats she and her editors receive on a regular basis and unending harassment since they all use their real names. She says it is the support she receives from within the Middle East and outside that keeps her going and that “nothing will stop ‘Jasad’ from being published.”

Several new lines are being drawn in the Middle East’s desert sand simultaneously... If they continue to be drawn at this rate longer and thicker, it’s hard to foresee any governments, censors or jails being able to stop them.

Oman: Women face scorn after taking over family shops

2009-09-23T10:39:00.000-04:00

Saleh al Shaibany, Foreign Correspondent

BAHLA, OMAN // As a young woman who owns and runs a grocery store, Salwa al Habsi is something of a rarity in conservative, rural Oman. But as growing numbers of men flock to the cities in pursuit of better jobs, businesswomen like Ms al Habsi may not be so rare for much longer.

The shop she now owns, in the deeply conservative town of Bahla in the Interior Region, about 250km from the capital Muscat, was originally owned by her father but was closed after he died a year ago. Ms al Habsi’s three brothers initially refused to let her run the store, but her mother, supporting her daughter’s bid to run the shop, gave Ms al Habsi her gold, which she sold to raise funds to buy out her siblings’ shares of the business.

“If it is all right for women to run a business in Muscat, why are men raising their eyebrows in the regions?” said Ms al Habsi, 24. “It is certainly not against Islam and I have the full blessing of the government since authorities have granted me a business licence required to buy my father’s shop.”

Many family-owned stores such as Ms al Habsi’s in rural Oman are closed down when their owners die because male descendants are reluctant to run inherited businesses and many prefer to move to Muscat to find better paid jobs.

Ms al Habsi is the only woman in Bahla to run a shop, a profession that is taboo for a woman in the culture of any provincial town in Oman, and she is the target of constant ridicule from relatives and friends.

In rural Oman’s patriarchal culture, it is regarded as breaking with tradition for a woman to run a business. Traditionalists say women like her are driven by money, putting greed ahead of culture and heritage.

“The desire for money put them at risk of being shunned away from the community by going against traditions,” said Malik Saleh, a Bahla-based historian and poet. “That means these women may not find marriage suitors since they are seen as immoral.”

But Ms al Habsi said she took on the business to keep her family heritage alive, rather than seek a fortune, and pointed out that her brothers were not interested in managing the store.

“This business was started by my great-grandfather and I am not going to allow it to be taken over by strangers or simply shut down,” she said of the store, which sells many goods, from food and incense burners to kitchenware. “If my brothers care for traditions, why are they not interested in running the store?”

Some young women in other towns said survival now took precedence over preserving male-dominated traditions. “I dropped out of school. This is the only thing I can do,” said Asila al Jabri, 36, who owns and runs a women’s clothing shop in a much smaller town in Ibri, in the Eastern Region.

“The death of my father gave me the opportunity of earning a living. Had I listened to male chauvinism, that women should not openly compete with men in business, then my family would have starved.”

Mrs al Jabri has four children and a wheelchair-bound husband who is unable to work, making her the sole breadwinner of the family. But that does not spare her from scorn and sarcastic comments.

Statistics from the ministry of commerce show that less than one per cent of just over 54,000 small retail businesses outside of Muscat are now owned and run exclusively by women, up from zero per cent five years ago.

“Credit to them, these young women make a success out of the trades left by their fathers and they are also breaking the tradition by being the breadwinners of the families,” said Nader al Balushi, a Muscat resident who was on a visit to Bahla.

Women’s rights activists have called for more women in rural areas to start up their own businesses. Women wishing to do business in the regions should refuse to be pushed down by men writing their own social rules,” said Mahbooba al Hadhrami, a committee member of the Oman Women Association.

“The few women running their own trades in these towns are pioneers for better things to come.”

MENA: U.N. Approves Long-Awaited New Women's Agency

2009-09-16T11:09:00.001-04:00

> Source: IPS - Inter Press Service
> Author: Thalif Deen
>
> UNITED NATIONS - After more than three years of political foot-dragging, the 192-member General Assembly adopted a historic resolution Monday aimed at creating a new U.N. agency for women.
>
> The decision to create a separate powerful body to deal exclusively with gender-related activities comes years - or decades - after the United Nations created specialised agencies to deal with specific issues, including children, population, refugees, food, environment, education, health and tourism, among many others.
>
> Currently, there are four existing women's U.N. entities in the world body: the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues; the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women; and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW).
>
> But none of them is as politically powerful and financially stable as full-fledged U.N. agencies.
>
> When the new women's agency is created, perhaps by the middle of next year, it will be headed by an under-secretary-general (USG), the third highest ranking position in the U.N. system, after the secretary-general and the deputy secretary-general.
>
> The four existing women's entities are not headed by USGs, while all agencies such as the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) and the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are.
>
> The resolution adopted Monday "strongly supports the consolidation" of the four bodies currently dealing with women "into a composite entity, taking into account the existing mandates".
>
> The Assembly also requested Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to produce a comprehensive proposal specifying details of the proposed composite entity; an organsational chart; funding for the new body; and the composition of the executive board to oversee its operational activities.
>
> Charlotte Bunch, executive director of the Centre for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University, told IPS: "We are very relieved that the General Assembly has finally taken decisive action to create the new gender equality entity on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Beijing women's conference."
>
> "We consider this a great victory for women's rights as well as for the coalition of women's and other civil society organisations that have worked hard for over three years to bring this entity into being," she added.
>
> Daniela Rosche, head of Oxfam's gender campaign, said that while it welcomes the principle on this much-needed women's agency, "The attitude of some member states to weaken its mandate at the last minute is deplorable".
>
> This decision to have a new women's rights entity in place will mean absolutely nothing if member states fail to give it a clear mission, she added.
>
> The good news is that the new agency has the potential to streamline decision-making and programming related to women's rights under one overarching agency, Rosche said in a statement released Monday.
>
> "This body doesn't add another layer to the already heavy U.N. bureaucracy. The potential to have an impact on women’s lives through education, organising and empowerment is very real and exciting," Rosche said.
>
> In the resolution adopted Monday, she pointed out, any reference to the agency's future mandate has been deleted. But it's not too late to turn things around.
>
> The leadership of Secretary-General Ban is urgently needed to ensure that the momentum is not lost and women's rights get the political backing they deserve.
>
> The swift appointment of an under-secretary-general will help ensure an effective conclusion of this process by next year, she added.
>
> A coalition of over 300 international non-governmental organisations, which has been pursuing a global campaign for Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) in the U.N. system, said it was pleased that the General Assembly expressed strong and unanimous support in adopting a resolution that will enable the creation of the new gender equality entity to be headed by a new USG.
>
> In a statement released Monday, GEAR said: "We urge Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to immediately begin the recruitment process for appointing a strong leader grounded in women's rights and gender equality as the USG who will lead this process of consolidating the four existing entities".
>
> "We expect a broad, open search process to start promptly so that the USG is in place and the entity can be operational by the time of the Beijing + 15 Review at the Commission on the Status of Women in March of 2010."
>
> The coalition also said that member states must address in a timely fashion all the outstanding issues required for the entity to begin operations, including the mechanisms for governance and oversight.
>
> Donor countries need to pledge the substantial funding (about one billion dollars) to support the proposed strong field operation that the entity must have to be successful in fulfilling the promises made by governments and the U.N. to the world's women.
>
> "As civil society has always played a vital role in the U.N.'s work on women's rights, we urge member states and the Secretary General to commit to systematic and on-going participation of civil society, particularly women's organisations, in every state of the process at global, regional, national, and local levels including in the governing board," the coalition said.
>
> Women around the world have waited a long time for the United Nations and member states to fulfill the promises made since the first International Women's Year in 1975, the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 30 years ago, as well as the U.N. World Conferences in Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995).
>
> "This is an important and crucial step forward now it must be made operational without further delay," the coalition declared.

A New Gender Agenda

2009-08-20T09:39:00.000-04:00

INTERVIEW by MARK LANDLER

Hillary Rodham Clinton staked her claim as an advocate for global women’s issues in 1995, when, as first lady, she gave an impassioned speech at a United Nations conference in Beijing. As secretary of state, she pushed to create a new position, ambassador at large for global women’s issues, and recruited Melanne Verveer, her former chief of staff, to fill it. And she has drawn attention to women at nearly every stop in her travels, most recently on an 11-day visit to Africa, during which, among other things, she went to eastern Congo to speak out against mass rape. Hours before leaving on that trip, Clinton discussed women’s issues and the Obama administration’s foreign policy for 35 minutes in her elegant seventh-floor office at the State Department. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.

Q: In your confirmation hearing, you said you would put women’s issues at the core of American foreign policy. But as you know, in much of the world, gender equality is not accepted as a universal human right. How do you overcome that deep-seated cultural resistance?

Clinton: You have to recognize how deep-seated it is, but also reach an understanding of how without providing more rights and responsibilities for women, many of the goals we claim to pursue in our foreign policy are either unachievable or much harder to achieve.

Democracy means nothing if half the people can’t vote, or if their vote doesn’t count, or if their literacy rate is so low that the exercise of their vote is in question. Which is why when I travel, I do events with women, I talk about women’s rights, I meet with women activists, I raise women’s concerns with the leaders I’m talking to.

I happen to believe that the transformation of women’s roles is the last great impediment to universal progress — that we have made progress on many other aspects of human nature that used to be discriminatory bars to people’s full participation. But in too many places and too many ways, the oppression of women stands as a stark reminder of how difficult it is to realize people’s full human potential.

Q: I’m curious about what priorities you’re setting. Will the Obama administration have a signature issue — sex trafficking or gender-based violence or maternal mortality or education for girls — in the way that H.I.V./AIDS came to symbolize the Bush-administration strategy?

Clinton: We are having as a signature issue the fact that women and girls are a core factor in our foreign policy. If you look at what has to be done, in some societies, it is a different problem than in others. In some of the societies where women are deprived of political and economic rights, they have access to education and health care. In other societies, they may have been given the vote, but girl babies are still being put out to die.

So it’s not one specific program, so much as a policy. When it comes to our global health agenda, maternal health is now part of the Obama administration’s outreach. We’re very proud of the work this country has done, through Pepfar, on H.I.V./AIDS [the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was begun by George W. Bush in 2003]. We’ve moved from an understanding of how to deal with global AIDS to recognizing it’s now a woman’s disease, because women are the most vulnerable and often have no power to protect themselves. And it’s increasingly younger women or even girls.

But women die every minute from poor maternal health care. You know, H.I.V./AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria — those are all, unfortunately, equal-opportunity killers. Maternal health is a woman’s issue; it’s a family issue; it’s a child issue. And for the United States to say to countries that have very high maternal mortality rates, “We care about the future of your children, and in order to do that, we care about the present of your women,” is a powerful statement.

Q: Do you have a point of view about what should come first: Do you empower women economically and then hope that they seize a political role for themselves? Or do you seek to give them more legal and political standing and hope that they can win a place in the economic sphere?

Clinton: That’s a great question, because I think the historical record would show both routes have worked. Women were not particularly economically empowered when we finally included the right of women to vote in our Constitution. So women’s rights were expanded in 1920, and that opened up a lot of doors to women to see themselves in different roles, including economic roles, outside the home.

India’s been a democracy for 60 years, and remarkably extended the vote to everyone, every caste, to both men and women equally. So women have been given the right to vote, but without economic empowerment, they didn’t have the influence that their votes should have brought, which is why the government of India has made such a big point of extending economic and political opportunity equally to women.

And when we visited SEWA, the Self-Employed Women’s Association [in India], those women had the vote before they were born, but being economically empowered, being able to stand up for themselves inside their families, on the streets of their villages, is giving them a sense of autonomy and authority that just their vote couldn’t have.

Q: In your travels as secretary of state, you’ve focused heavily on the role of microlending. Is there a reason in these early days that you’ve tended to emphasize the economic over the political?

Clinton: It’s interesting: it’s partly because of where I’ve gone. It’s also because I’ve worked on microcredit since 1983, going back to Arkansas and projects that I worked on with my husband there.

I am also struck by every international public-opinion poll I’ve ever seen, that the No. 1 thing most men and women want is a good job with a good income. It is at the core of the human aspiration to be able to support oneself, to give one’s children a better future. Microenterprise is uniquely designed to empower women because — through the trial and error of its development, going back to Muhammad Yunus’s invention of it in Bangladesh — women are much greater at investing in future goods than the men who have participated in microcredit have turned out to be. And they are also very reliable in paying back, because they are so eager to have that extra help and recognition that microcredit provides.

So, I don’t make a distinction between economic empowerment and political, social empowerment; I think it’s fair to say both need to go hand in hand.

Q: There are counterterrorism experts who have made the observation that countries that nurture terrorist groups tend to be the same societies that marginalize women. Do you see a link between your campaign on women’s issues and our national security?

Clinton: I think it’s an absolute link. Part of the reason I have pursued it as secretary of state is because I see it in our national security interest. If you look at where we are fighting terrorism, there is a connection to groups that are making a stand against modernity, and that is most evident in their treatment of women.

What does preventing little girls from going to school in Afghanistan by throwing acid on them have to do with waging a struggle against oppression externally? It’s a projection of the insecurity and the disorientation that a lot of these terrorists and their sympathizers feel about a fast-changing world, where they turn on television sets and see programs with women behaving in ways they can’t even imagine. The idea that young women in their own societies would pursue an independent future is deeply threatening to their cultural values.

Q: Many of the countries where the abuses against women are most prevalent are also countries that have a vital strategic importance to the United States: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, India. How can you aggressively advocate for women without jeopardizing those strategic relationships?

Clinton: Well, in a number of these strategic relationships, there’s a commitment to advancing the roles and rights of women. In India, the changes that have been made are remarkable. There are still tens of millions of very poor women, but women have assumed more and more responsibility; they are seen in public positions and increasingly economic ones, where their stature is accepted by society.

When I meet with the Chinese leadership, as I just did in the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, they have women who are part of their leadership team, and women who are assuming greater and greater economic and political roles.

Obviously, there’s work to be done in both India and China, because the infanticide rate of girl babies is still overwhelmingly high, and unfortunately with technology, parents are able to use sonograms to determine the sex of a baby, and to abort girl children simply because they’d rather have a boy. And those are deeply set attitudes. But at the governmental level, there is a great deal of openness and commitment that I am seeing.

In other societies where we have strategic security interests, it’s a challenge to move the agenda forward in a way that includes women’s issues. When we did our strategic review on Afghanistan, we said very clearly, We can’t be all things to all people in Afghanistan. We have to focus on a few critical concerns. But one of them was the role of women, and women’s participation in society.

Q: Let me ask you one question about India, where we’ve just concluded a Strategic Dialogue agreement. I didn’t notice too much emphasis on sex trafficking on your trip, even though it’s clear India remains the world capital of sex trafficking. Can you make that case strenuously with the Indians at the same moment that we’re trying to do so many other things with them?

Clinton: Absolutely, and in fact, we do it every year with our annual report on trafficking in persons. It’s a very high priority to me, and it is raised as part of the ongoing discussions that we have with many countries. In a democracy like India, there is a challenge of getting the word down to the local jurisdiction — the local police, the local judges, the local authorities. But I have no doubt about the seriousness with which their government takes this issue.

Q: Could some of the billions of dollars the United States has spent on military aid to Pakistan since 9/11 have been better spent on education and health care for girls and women?

Clinton: Yes. The answer is yes, and in my meetings with then-President Musharraf in ’03, ’05, ’07, in this country as well, I raised it all the time.

I remember visiting a village about 45 minutes outside of Lahore, when I was in Pakistan as first lady, and we met with a group of mothers and grandmothers in the village. And they wanted very much to have a school at the secondary level for their daughters, the way their sons did. But the school for their sons was not in the village, so the sons had to travel. No one could even imagine the daughters traveling outside their village to continue their education.

And when I think about the extraordinarily accomplished Pakistanis in the professions, in medicine, in education, I think it is certainly the case that if Pakistan had invested more in the education of children so that poor families would not have sent their boys off to be educated by extremists, it might well have made a difference. And it still can, because that’s part of our approach now.

Q: Because it’s also a question of how we allocate our resources.

Clinton: That’s right, and with the Kerry-Lugar/Berman bill[s] that provide aid for these kinds of purposes in Pakistan, we hope to try to make up for lost time. [These Senate and House bills are currently being finalized in Congress.]

Q: Gender-based violence is an enormous issue in much of Africa, and in places like Congo, rape, as you know, is an instrument of war. How can you, or anybody else, hope to combat that?

Clinton: President Obama and I and the United States will not tolerate this continuation of wanton, senseless, brutal violence perpetrated against girls and women. We don’t know exactly what we can do, but we are going to be delivering some aid and some ideas about how to better organize the communities to deal with it. We’re going to sound the alarm that this is not all just unexpected and irrational.

These militias, which perpetrate a lot of these rapes and other horrific assaults on girls and women, are paid well, or realize the spoils of guarding the mines. Those mines, which are one of the great natural resources of the Congo, produce a lot of the materials that go into our cellphones and other electronics. There are tens of millions of dollars that go into these militias that, in effect, get translated into a sense of impunity that is then exercised against the weakest members of society.

The ambassador for war crimes, Steve Rapp, has the distinction of being among the first international prosecutors to win a case on gender violence, and I specifically wanted him to take on this role, because I want to highlight this issue.

Q: I’ve been at more than a few women’s events with you overseas where the men in the audience drift off to their BlackBerrys or into a snooze after a few minutes. How do you change the mind-set, not just overseas but at home and in this building, that tends to view women’s issues as a pink ghetto?

Clinton: By making the arguments that I am making here — that so-called women’s issues are stability issues, security issues, equity issues. The World Bank and many other analyses have proved over and over again that where women are mistreated, where they are denied equal rights, you will find instability that very often serves as an incubator of extremism.

A woman who is safe enough in her own life to invest in her children and see them go to school is not going to have as many children. The resource battles over water and land will be diminished. This is all connected. And it’s an issue of how we take hard power and soft power, so called, and use it to advance not just American ends but, in advancing global progress, we are making the world safer for our own children.

Q: Last month in New Delhi, a young woman asked you an interesting question: How would you view the progress of women in both India and the United States? She pointed out that India elected a woman as prime minister within three decades of independence, while the U.S. had yet to elect a female president. Is there any lesson from your own presidential campaign that you can use to take to women elsewhere in the world?

Clinton: Well, you’ve heard me talk about this in a lot of settings, from Japan to South Korea to Indonesia to India to Latin America [laughs]. It is one of the most common questions I’m asked, along with the question about how I can now work for and with President Obama, since he and I ran so vigorously against each other. It is clearly on young women’s minds. And I find that both exciting and gratifying.

My campaign for many millions of reasons gave a lot of heart to many young women. It is still the most common comment that people make to me: “your campaign gave me courage” or “your campaign made a difference in my daughter’s life” or “I went back to school because of your campaign.” So, it is unfinished business, and young women know it is unfinished business.

The vast majority of them will never run for political office in any country. But they may decide to seek an education that their family doesn’t approve of, or move away for a job that is a little bit frightening to them, but which they feel they’ve got the skills to do. Or, you know, stand up and speak out against an injustice they see. And it is all of that ripple that is building and building — and is unstoppable.

I live for those moments where I see this woman stand up in SEWA — this poor, uneducated woman — and say, “I am the president of SEWA; 1.1 million women voted.” I mean, what a great statement that was from her. So, I get a lot of joy out of doing this work. I think it is so critically important, but it is also incredibly moving to see these individual lives changed because of some event or speech that you have no idea why it made an impression on them.

Mark Landler is the diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times.

Yemen: New degree to put gender back into development

2009-08-02T11:30:00.000-04:00

Date: Sunday, August 02, 2009
Source: Yemen Times

SANA'A - In a country repeatedly rated last in the Global Gender Gap report, a new master's degree at the University of Sana'a promises Yemeni women a brighter future, by combining gender and development studies.

The Gender-Development Research and Study Center is encouraging university graduates with high levels of English proficiency to apply for its program in Gender and International Development, to start in February 2010.

"Our Masters students will have the capacity for critical thinking, to see the problem of development deeply," said Dr. Husnia Al-Kadiri, head of the center.

"If women participate in the master's, they will not represent all Yemeni women, but they will work on how to push education for girls," said Al-Kadiri, "which is the most important tool to make women's participation visible in development."

"Women are playing a role in development, but it is silent- not visible," she said.

Only 55 percent of Yemeni girls are enrolled in basic education compared to 75 percent of boys, according to the government's latest statistics.

Although United Nations statistics increase both these percentages by around 10 percent, they report that girls' attendance in basic education reaches no more than 41 percent.

The disempowerment of women and children was one of the four underlying reasons for the poor outcomes of development interventions in Yemen, according to the UN's 2005 Common Country Assessment.

The three others were lack of transparency and participation, inequitable and unsustainable use of water resources, and the growth of unemployment in a rapidly expanding population.

The two-year master's program is the first of its kind in the region, said Al-Kadiri, although the American universities of Cairo and Beirut also offer gender-based courses.

The International Development Center at Roskilde University in Denmark is supporting the program, and international specialists will teach for the first few years while they train a permanent staff.

"Gender in development is making sure men and women both participate in development," said Dr. Saed Al-Saba, head of documentation and information at the center. "It is ensuring both women and men are given equal opportunities."

The course is definitely not only for women, she said, because the presence of men is vital for women to be able to seize their right to participate in development.

"Men must understand that gender in development is not dangerous to men, it is just about equal opportunity between the sexes," she said.

Women and men think differently, explained Al-Kadiri, but the potentials of both are complementary. Both sexes must be included in development so that half a country's potential is not lost along the way.

"If we give the chance to women to participate, the potential of both sexes will accelerate the wheel of development," she said.

"When you integrate gender, you can solve a lot of problems," added Aisha Saeed, head of the Protection Program at Save the Children, who worked with the center in 2008 on research on gender-based violence.

BETTER GENDER BUDGETING

"[The news master's] is very important because people don't know how to integrate gender in development," said Khadija Radman, deputy minister for women affairs at the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The program will help integrate gender-related considerations into government and non-governmental organization plans, according to Radman, notably through gender budgeting.

"They don't know how to do it!" she said of gender budgeting, or equal and fair distribution of resources between men and women-centered projects in Yemen.

Only 33 percent of governmental, non-governmental and international organizations took gender into consideration while drawing up their budgets, according to a 2009 survey by the Yemeni Strategic Development Center on gender-responsive budgeting.

"Gender budgeting is the biggest issue in development," said Al-Kadiri, who explains that with it, a majority of problems could be solved.

The program aims to teach students about gender budgeting, as well as more development-orientated subjects such as conflict resolution.

EVIDENCE-BASED STUDIES

Part of the Gender-Development Research and Study Center's work over the last few years has been very productive, said Al-Kadiri.

Campaign-orientated research into early marriage in particular bore fruit, as it contributed the beginning of a discussion on a minimum age for marriage. Although a law that sets 17 as the minimum legal age to marry is now being stalled in parliament, the discussion is an achievement, she said.

When you have statistical evidence of early marriage, female genital mutilation or gender-based violence, it is harder for people to ignore the problem, she said.

Hard facts and dialogue are a key to closing the gender gap, from the family-level to government.

In Yemen, only one of the 301 seats in parliament is held by a woman, and two ministries -the Ministry of Human Rights and the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs- are headed by women.

To date, women are outnumbered four to one in legislatures around the world, according to the UN.

"Despite the progress that has been made, six out of ten of world's poorest people are still women and girls, less than 16 percent of the world's parliamentarians are women, two thirds of all children shut outside the school gates are girls," according to the United Nations' Development Program's Web site.

Over 60 percent of all unpaid family workers globally are women, women still earn on average 17 percent less than men, and about one-third of women suffer gender-based violence during their lives, it says.

ACTION NOT WORDS

The program has received support from the University of Sana'a, said Al-Kadiri, but it seeks more technical support from international donors and UN agencies.

"This is the nucleus for changing society," she said. "This center with other partners will be a good change agent for Yemen, even regionally where conflict is high."

Al-Kadiri also urged local women's rights organizations to support the center's efforts and show a greater presence at its meetings.

"Talking about gender equality is important, but doing is more important," she said.

Although it showed improvement in scores from previous years, Yemen was ranked 130 out of 130 countries in the 2008 Global Gender Gap Report, an annual report issued by the World Economic Forum.

New law gives greater role to businesswomen

2009-06-29T12:01:00.001-04:00

Galal Fakkar | Arab News

JEDDAH: The new law for the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CSCCI) gives greater powers to businesswomen, Fahd Al-Sultan, secretary-general of the council, said yesterday.

“The new law, which replaces the existing 50-year-old law, will be passed within a few days,” he said.

Speaking to Arab News after attending a seminar on “Developing a new concept and culture of chamber elections” at the JCCI, Al-Sultan said the new law was designed to provide the council with necessary flexibility.

“The law has already been studied by the committee of experts at the Council of Ministers and has been passed to the minister of commerce and industry for his endorsement before presenting to the Cabinet for final approval,” he said.

Al-Sultan said the new law gives businesswomen a greater role in the council as well as in the development of the country.

“Even if only women are elected to the CSCCI board, there is nothing in the law to prevent it,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, three businesswomen, Madhawi Al-Hassoun, Lamy Suleiman and Nashwa Taher, yesterday announced their decision to contest the upcoming election to the JCCI board. They said they wanted to deepen the concept of women’s participation in elections to civil organizations in the country.

The Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School Host Young Women Leaders From the Middle East

2009-06-25T11:55:00.000-04:00

Penn Law and Wharton Executive Education Deliver Third Annual Legal and Business Fellowship Program in Partnership With AMIDEAST and the U.S. Department of State

PHILADELPHIA, June 22, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Wharton School have attracted a group of 22 young women leaders in business and law from over 10 countries in the Middle East for a Legal and Business Fellowship Program. Now in its third year, the Penn Law and Wharton Executive Education program is offered in partnership with the America-Mideast Educational and Training Services, Inc. (AMIDEAST) and funded by the U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).

The young executives and lawyers came to Penn from countries that included Algeria, Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen, and the West Bank. Admission to the program is highly competitive and based upon each woman's leadership potential, commitment to professional growth in the business and legal sectors of her local economy, and knowledge of English.Since completion of the program, the women have dispersed across the U.S. for a four-month internship at a Fortune 500 company or top-tier law firm.

"It was a pleasure to welcome the third cohort from the Legal and Business Fellowship Program this year," says Wharton Executive Education Senior Director Sandhya Karpe. "The program participants are eagerly awaited each year by staff and faculty at Penn because of the richness they bring to the community. Over the years, we have learned as much from these fine young women as they have learned from us - about their countries and cultures, but more importantly about resilience. We wish them happiness and success as they return to their countries to follow their dreams and as passionate ambassadors of peace and change."

The program is co-directed by Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management and director of Wharton's Center for Human Resources; Janet Greco, co-president, Transition One Associates; and Michael Knoll, Theodore K. Warner Professor of Law & Professor of Real Estate, and co-director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Knoll notes that the faculty makes changes to the program each year to keep it fresh. One such important change was the addition of societal wealth creation projects, designed and facilitated by Jim Thompson, associate director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and director of Wharton's Societal Wealth Program.

"This year we asked the women to produce business plans for a business that would be profitable for investors and cater to an important societal need in their home countries," Knoll says. "Working in groups of four or five, the women came up with a range of interesting proposals, including a glass-blowing factory, an English language school, and a recycling business. They drew heavily on what they had learned in their four weeks here. After their presentations, the women left Penn with a sense of accomplishment, confidence in their abilities, and a real can-do attitude."

Impressed by the women she has taught in the program, Lisa Warshaw, director of the Wharton Communication Program, says that the group is one of her favorites to teach. "These young women bring a wide diversity of experience and backgrounds that enhance the learning experience," Warshaw says. "We've always found them to be engaged and intellectually curious; we learn a great deal from our discussions with these remarkable women."

Raghda Shaheen, a program participant from the UAE, feels that the program represents an opportunity to break the stereotypes between Arabs and Americans. "The program allowed us to bridge the cultural gaps between the different environments," Shaheen says. What she will remember most about the program, in addition to the knowledge gained, was its transformative effect.

"On my last day at Wharton, after saying farewell to the amazing faculty and staff at the graduation ceremony, I walked back to the hotel with a heavy heart," Shaheen says. "I was carrying my Wharton certificate, four heavy binders for each week of class, a couple of amazing books, a treasure of friendships, and a life-time experience. I looked back at the statue of Benjamin Franklin smiling at me, and at that moment, I knew my life would never be the same."

Raghda Shaheen: Bridging Two Worlds -- America and The Middle East

2009-06-25T11:47:00.000-04:00

Published: June 23, 2009 in Knowledge@Wharton

Raghda Shaheen, who works for the Dubai International Finance Centre, recently completed a four-week business and legal fellowship program at Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania law school. The program, funded by the U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and supported by America-Mideast Educational and Training Services (AMIDEAST), teaches management, business and legal skills to women from the Middle East and North Africa. This year, 22 women from 11 countries attended the program. Shaheen will spend the next three months working at the Chicago Chamber of Commerce before returning to the UAE. She spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about her experiences in Gaza City, Canada, the U.S. and the Middle East.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: Raghda, thanks for joining us.

Shaheen: Thank you for having me.

Knowledge@Wharton: Can you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? Where you were born, educated and where you have worked so far?

Shaheen: Sure. I am an Arabic girl, born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. So I am Palestinian. I lived in Kuwait for seven years and then moved to Palestine. I grew up in Gaza City, and moved to Toronto, Canada, in 2001. I received a bachelor's degree in engineering. I worked there for a couple of years and then moved to Dubai in 2008 and that's where I live right now.

Knowledge@Wharton: What are you doing there?

Shaheen: I'm a business and process consultant at Dubai International Financial Centre.

Knowledge@Wharton: Why did you decide to come to the program at Wharton and Penn Law?

Shaheen: I always find exchange programs are fascinating because it's my opportunity to break some stereotypes. I've been in similar programs before and I really enjoyed the experience. So I thought that I would use the opportunity to come again to the States and do more work on breaking stereotypes.

We Suggest...
Jeremy Siegel on the Market: Rough Going for Now, but Stocks Still a Good Bet
Knowledge@Wharton: What kinds of stereotypes are you talking about?

Shaheen: On both sides. I'm talking about the stereotypes of both Americans and Arabs [regarding] business behaviors, the people, the culture ...

Knowledge@Wharton: So what's an example on your side?

Shaheen: I find a lot of stereotypes about Arab women that I would like to break and about Arabs in general here in the States, because [most people] receive their [impressions] from the media. We all know that the media can be biased at certain times and does not reflect the correct image of the culture. So I came here to experience the American culture by myself through my [own] eyes, not through someone else's eyes. And I try to transfer that to the Americans myself.

Knowledge@Wharton: So what would you think is a typical American image of an Arab woman and how is that image right or wrong?

Shaheen: They still have the image that Arab women may not be educated, that they're suppressed, that they can't work, they don't speak, they are not cosmopolitan. So I try with my fellows here to break that stereotype. We tell them that Arabs in general, not just women, usually speak two languages at a minimum. We speak English as a second language in my country. There are other places in the Middle East, such as Lebanon and Syria, that speak French as a second language. The exposure to the West is very high in the Middle East, probably because of the political situation and the geographical location of that area. So we already know about other countries and civilizations out there in the world.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is it unusual for Arab women who are educated and have work experience like you to come to the States and take courses here and bring that [knowledge] back to their home countries?

Shaheen: I would say it depends. It depends on the family and it depends on the occasion. My aunt 30 years ago left to receive her education in medicine in Germany. But that doesn't mean that it's okay for most of the families. It depends on the family level of education and the country, the culture and the tradition. The Arab world is 14 countries and it's diverse. I think this is the beauty of it, that it's diverse. You would find all the cultures there.

Knowledge@Wharton: In Gaza City, would you consider yourself one of the more educated, more experienced women in terms of business background and career?

Shaheen: I wouldn't say the most educated because ... the education level in Gaza is very high. But I would say I'm one of the luckiest to have this exposure to opportunities out there in the world, because of the unfortunate political situation. Some of the people in Gaza are lucky to be alive.... So yes, I am blessed with opportunities. But the education [level] is very high in Gaza. I can talk about my personal experience. I was a senior in high school when the [uprising] started and the war. The political situation deteriorated in Gaza in 2001. That did not stop me from reaching my school, which was 45 minutes away. So I believe people living there definitely have a strong soul and are intent on [providing] education for their kids.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is this your first trip to the United States?

Shaheen: No.

Knowledge@Wharton: When were you here before?

Shaheen: I've been here a couple of times before. I have a sister here who lives in Boston and is chief of radiology at Harvard Medical School. And I've visited Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey during my previous job through Siemens Canada. So I received some training courses here.

Knowledge@Wharton: You are now taking both business and law courses? Is that correct?

Shaheen: Yes. We have taken a couple of law classes.

Knowledge@Wharton: What is the one thing that you've learned in your business courses that you feel has been especially valuable?

Shaheen: That's an excellent question. I am an engineer by education. I haven't had a strong exposure to finance and accounting. My job is consulting. I always face balance sheets and "no, we can't" answers from the finance department. But now I understand what they're going through because I've attended an excellent accounting class. It was a fantastic experience. It was taught in an unusual way. I think it's a new [approach] even at Wharton and they were testing it on us. I'm telling you it's fantastic. So my favorite class so far has been the accounting class.

Knowledge@Wharton: Are there certain key subject areas or topic areas that professional business women in the Middle East feel they might need more exposure to on an international basis than they now have?

Shaheen: I don't think it is Arab women only.... We [took] a course [aimed at] women [in general] in the workplace -- the issues we face as women in our workplace and how we behave when we face challenges. I found this course very interesting. It would be excellent if we could promote it for women in general, not just for women in the Middle East.

Knowledge@Wharton: How can you relate that course to your personal experience in the workplace as a woman?

Shaheen: It was [about] being proud to be a woman and not surrendering or giving up because you're a woman. You don't need to work harder than your colleagues just to prove a point ... to prove that you're capable and qualified. I think that's a fantastic observation.

Knowledge@Wharton: But I've heard from some Arab women that, in fact, they do need to work harder. They need to work two or three times harder.

Shaheen: Again, I don't think it's just an Arab woman's challenge. It's women around the globe.... I worked in Canada, as I said, and I worked in the Middle East. In both cases regarding the executive managers I've seen who are females, yes, that observation was true about them. They were trying to prove that they were qualified, capable and stronger than their peers so they had to work harder.

Knowledge@Wharton: In your business experience in the Middle East, have you ever personally felt discriminated against because you're a woman?

Shaheen: Not at all, actually. I did face that fear, to be honest with you, because of the stereotype. I lived in Toronto for seven years so I wasn't sure how the work environment would be in the Middle East. But I can quote for you the hospitality COO in my company, who is German. She said to me: "Raghda, as a German woman I face less racism and sexism in the Middle East than I ever faced anywhere else." So it's a very supportive environment. We have many executive women. I'm living, as I mentioned, in Dubai right now. There is a foundation for leadership for women supported by the ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid. To be honest, I'm very happy to be there to receive some of the support. I myself have been on an exchange program that supports me as a woman.

Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned that you've had a lot of contact with other women in the program here. Do you feel that part of the value of this program is to help you set up a network of women you will keep in touch with when you leave? And do you have that kind of opportunity in Dubai to set up these networks? Is that something that can happen there easily?

Shaheen: I've been always interested in such networks with women. Since getting my undergraduate degree in Canada, I have been part of a Women in Engineering program because I've always been a minority. Here, yes, I think that's the main purpose of the program. But the network should not only be for women.... We should expand it because the world is not only women out there. We should extend our hand to help men also.... We should focus on the development of relationships between females and males in the workplace so that both can work together and prosper together.

Knowledge@Wharton: I have never been to Dubai. But I get the sense that you're one of a rare breed of women in that area. You are very educated, very articulate. You've had work experiences in Canada, in the U.S. You're going to be working in Chicago when you leave. But in Dubai you are definitely a minority in terms of the women there, correct?

Shaheen: It's not true, but thank you for the compliment. There are a lot of cosmopolitan girls there and ladies. Actually, I'm the fourth one in this program from my company and the number is increasing. As I mentioned earlier, I was in an exchange program similar to this but it was both males and females with American businessmen and women. The observation was the same. Again, you would be surprised that we have females who are like those you mentioned -- cosmopolitan, speaking good English, having exposure to the world. I think the world is getting smaller. Dubai is where everything is happening nowadays.

Knowledge@Wharton: Right, it is very cosmopolitan itself.

Shaheen: It is a very cosmopolitan city. Again, as I mentioned, exposure to [different] cultures is very high in the Middle East. It's close to Europe. It's close to China, India, the Far East. I think the geographical location really helps.

Knowledge@Wharton: But is it generational? How old are you?

Shaheen: I'm 25.

Knowledge@Wharton: Do you feel that women in your generation are having a very different experience than women who are 45 or 50?

Shaheen: I [believe that's true] everywhere in the world. Even here, the current generation is different than their parents. Yes, we're developing with the media, and with the technology. We watch "American Idol." We watch your TV shows. We watch "Oprah," "Dr. Phil"...

Knowledge@Wharton: Is that a good thing?

Shaheen: I don't know about that. [We watch] "Sex in the City." So I guess it's just that the exposure is getting higher and higher.... [Also], it's because the media to a certain degree exposes you to the American streets, environments and buildings. So when we went to New York, most of us felt that we had there before. We saw the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. You feel that you've been on the streets of New York even if you've never been there because you always see it on TV. So that's what increasing the exposure; it's the technology. Believe it or not, the political problems are playing a good part here because we have to learn about what's happening out there in the world. Most of the political situation in the Middle East is highly related to the U.S. So that's why we're highly exposed and are learning a lot about you.

Knowledge@Wharton: What about Gaza City, where you went to high school? Is that as sophisticated and developed as Dubai in terms of opportunities for women?

Shaheen: Opportunities for women in Gaza I would say are as bad as the opportunities for men. It's not because of [gender].... Unfortunately, the political situation is really bad down there. As I mentioned earlier, they don't have the opportunity to [be] exposed [to other places] or to travel as much. But before the political situation deteriorated in 2001 was when I first started my exchange program. When I was 16, I was in a Norwegian exchange program, so we had the Norwegian students come into Gaza and we traveled to Oslo. So when the political situation was stable, yes, Gaza was doing well. I don't think it's fair to compare it to Dubai because Dubai is, relatively speaking, stable. It's safe. There is no war there. The political situation is stable. Whereas for Gaza it is not, but hopefully it will be one day.

Knowledge@Wharton: You've probably come from a very supportive family as well. Is that correct? Your parents have been supportive so you don't face any disapproval about what you're doing or where you're going or anything like that?

Shaheen: Of course. All the way.

Knowledge@Wharton: Do you live alone in Dubai?

Shaheen: No, I live with them. Actually, they moved to come and live with me. They were supporting me all the way. When I was in Canada, my mom and my dad would take turns to come and visit me. They were living in Gaza so sometimes they would be back and forth between Gaza and Toronto. And then when I made the decision to move to Dubai, we thought that it was time for us to be together. So that's why we moved all of us to Dubai.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is it fairly common for young professionals to live with their parents?

Shaheen: Yes. I guess the Arabic culture is like most of the Eastern cultures. They are very much family oriented. It's not very common for girls to move out of their family houses, even guys, until they get married. That's just how the culture is.

Knowledge@Wharton: So what are your plans now for the next few years? You're going to Chicago?

Shaheen: For three months.

Knowledge@Wharton: What will you be doing there?

Shaheen: I heard that I'll be working in green initiatives, which I'm very excited about because that's what my graduation project here at Wharton is about. And I'll be working on the submission for the Olympics 2016.

Knowledge@Wharton: That's terrific.

Shaheen: How exciting is that? I'm very excited because I think I'll be having higher exposure to this green technology, which is booming as well in the Middle East, especially in Dubai. And afterwards, I always had the plan that I wanted to go for my MBA. That's why I was very excited about this opportunity [at] Wharton, which was always my dream school.... Now it's time for me to start working on my GMAT.

Knowledge@Wharton: So you plan to apply to graduate school?

Shaheen: Correct.

Knowledge@Wharton: Will that be after you complete your work in Chicago?

Shaheen: Yes. I'm planning to enjoy the experience to the maximum and not study while I'm there.

Knowledge@Wharton: What would you like to do after business school?

Shaheen: In the long term, I would like to work in the government and get some experience in the public administration sector.

Knowledge@Wharton: Where?

Shaheen: In Dubai.... Then afterwards I would like to teach and become a professor.

Knowledge@Wharton: An engineering professor? A business professor?

Shaheen: I haven't worked much with [engineering]. I would like to teach in a business school. I would like to teach an MBA class.

Knowledge@Wharton: So, who knows? We could see you back here sometime.... I have one final question. There's a story in The Wall Street Journal today talking about the steep declines in countries around the world, specifically Mexico, Germany and Japan, and how they are getting the brunt of this financial collapse. Are you feeling the impact of the financial crisis at all in Dubai?

Shaheen: I cannot deny that this financial crisis has hit the whole world hard. Dubai is a very global city, a cosmopolitan city. And it's very highly related to the [rest of] the world economy. So, yes, it does affect investments in Dubai. However, the government is being very [supportive]. About a month ago, the government of Abu Dhabi issued bonds for 30 billion Dirham, which is almost $10 billion, to support the economy in the UAE. And since then, the situation – I've been here a month so far and I'm always in touch with my colleagues to understand the situation and I read the news -- is starting to recover. So some companies are starting to hire again. Some [employees] are receiving their bonuses and their [annual] appraisals. So, yes, I think we've been affected. But also I think we're having a stronger recovery there because the government has the funds to support it.

Knowledge@Wharton: Thank you for joining us and good luck in Chicago.

Shaheen: Thank you. It was my pleasure.

Sheikha Fatima sponsor of UAE women's achievments in use of technology

2009-06-25T11:42:00.001-04:00

2009-06-24 13:25:28
WAM ABU DHABI, June 24th, 2009: UAE women have made remarkable achievements employing technology in service of the community, thanks to the efforts and generous support of H.H Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak President of the UAE Women's General Union (WGU) The GWU was among the first UAE institutions to use the latest tehnology to empower women, further advance their status and enable them take part in the process of building the nation.

Under the patronage of Sheikha Fatima, GWU, in November 2006, launched Women in Technology programme which serves as a perfect example of a public private partnership program designed to empower women through e-literacy.

Women in Technology is a regional public-private partnership program funded by the U.S. Department of State's Middle East Partnership Initiative --or MEPI--and works in partnership with the General Women's Union and its several partners throughout the Emirates.

Considered as one of the most successful women's training programs in the region, Women in Technology for the Middle East and North Africa seeks to empower women and youth, create educational opportunities, and foster economic reform through helping women acquire skills in business planning and entrepreneurship and learn a wide-range of computer programs through Microsoft's Unlimited Potential training.

Sheikha Fatima has extended strong support to Women in Technology participants to help them polish their communication, leadership and business writing skills. The participants join a network through which they connect, engage in community service activities and share resources to help them to advance in their careers or enter the job market.

On remarks last April in Abu Dhabi, U.S Ambassaor Richard G. Olson, Jr. saluted Sheikha Fatima her patronage and unwavering support for this program, and her dedication to empowering women throughout the UAE, as well as Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi for his support for women's issues. Olson also commended the tremendous work and accomplishments of the Women in Technology Program in the United Arab Emirates. The efforts of the General Women's Union, the Institute of International Education, an American not for profit institution, and Microsoft were also also highlighted by Ambassador Olsen.

The United Arab Emirates, he said, continues to show its dedication to improving the lives of its people. Over the past 37 years, the Emirates' investment in improving education and effectively eliminating illiteracy, improving and providing health care to its citizens, and adapting to rapid change while also maintaining its traditions and cultural values, should be commended.

Sheikha Fatima spared no efforts to supoport the use of technology as a tool to enhance women's lives, ans this represents just one example of the cross-cultural work the Emirates is doing to show its commitment to being a responsible global citizen and creating a better future for its people.

GWU is actively supporting MEPI, a unique inititaive in that it focuses on partnerships to build bridges between the United States and the Middle East through creative projects working to expand political participation, strengthen civil society and the rule of law, empower women and youth, create educational opportunities, and foster economic reform.

MEPI projects reach out directly to Non Governmental Organizations, the private sector, academic institutions, and other local groups, as well as governments, in providing direct support to the people of the region in addressing locally identified priorities and opportunities.

The Women in Technology project in the UAE is a perfect example of a public private partnership program designed to empower women - in this case, through "e-literacy." Women acquire skills in Business Planning and Entrepreneurship and learn a wide-range of computer programs through Microsoft's Unlimited Potential training. Women in Technology participants also polish their communication, leadership and business writing skills. The participants join a network through which they connect, engage in community service activities and share resources to help them to advance in their careers or enter the job market.

The program also provides tools and intensive instruction and coaching to local partner organizations, such as the Western Region Development Council here in the UAE. This enables them to operate their training centers on a long-term basis. The program provides support for a cost-recovery business model and reduces partners' dependence on external sources of funding.

This is very powerful. And it ensures that partner organizations have the knowledge and tools to expand their reach and ability to serve women in their communities long into the future, in other words, sustainability.

The Women in Technology program has been implemented in collaboration with fifty (50) local partner organizations across nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa. To date, the program has trained more than 6,000 women in the region. The program is managed by the Institute of International Education, a not-for-profit organization based in the United States. The Institute has been developing and administering high quality international education, training and leadership programs worldwide since 1919.

In the private sector, Microsoft Corporation has been a generous supporter and partner of Women in Technology throughout the region. Microsoft has provided more than $1 million in cash, equipment and in-kind contributions to the program since 2005. In 2008, Microsoft recognized Women in Technology with the "Outstanding Partnership Award" for its innovative partnership model between local and international organizations and the private sector.

Microsoft continues to serve as a model in its commitment to empower women by providing knowledge and skills through its high-quality, globally-recognized training. In addition to donating curricula packages to all fifty partner organizations in the region, Microsoft has funded the preparation of nearly 250 trainers to deliver its Unlimited Potential curriculum. Microsoft Unlimited Potential is a global initiative designed to narrow the technology skills gap and aid global workforce development. Without Microsoft's ongoing partnership and support to Women in Technology throughout the Middle East and North Africa, this program would not be possible.

GWU is a lead local partner of MEPI since the program was launched in the UAE in 2006. It has been a pioneer in women's development in the UAE under the leadership of Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak.

The General Women's Union's commitment to the partnership has allowed Women in Technology to gain recognition and reach women well beyond Abu Dhabi. Due to this strong foundation, Women in Technology was able last year to enter into a formal partnership with the Western Region Development Council, which has provided the extensive financial and logistical support needed to open new training centers for women in the Western Region.

WAM/MMYS

Qatar: Businesswomen forum to host leadership meet

2009-06-22T09:13:00.000-04:00

The Qatar Businesswomen Forum (QBWF) will host the ‘semi-annual leadership meeting’ of MENA Businesswomen’s Network (MENA BWN) in Doha from June 16 to 18.
The network is a partnership of local businesswomen’s organisations across the Middle East and North Africa, Vital Voices Global Partnership and the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) of the US Department of State.
The goal of the partnership is to build a regional network of businesswomen to expand the number of women in business, to increase the value of their businesses, to advance the role of women in society, and to promote a regional culture of women’s entrepreneurship.
Aisha Alfardan, QBWF vice -chairperson, said, “We are pleased to host the leadership meeting in Qatar. It will be an excellent opportunity for the new members to learn more about the network, and meet in person with businesswomen from other countries to share the expertise and exchange information.”

Saudi Arabia clamps down on unlicensed female gyms

2009-06-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

By Asma Alsharif

JEDDAH (Reuters) - "Let her get fat!" is the slogan women in Saudi Arabia are using to challenge a clampdown on female-only gyms.

Unhappy at the growing number of unlicensed female gyms, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs recently closed two in the Red Sea city of Jeddah and one in the city of Dammam on the Gulf Arab coast for not having a license.

In response, newspaper columnists and bloggers are promoting the sarcastic line "let her get fat!" as a way of fighting back, though it is likely to be a losing battle.

In Saudi Arabia, where clerics have extensive influence in society, gyms are sexually segregated because of conservative tribal and religious values.

Female participation in sports has long been a controversial issue in the kingdom, with physical education banned from public girls' schools and clerics issuing religious prohibitions on female participation in sports.

While male gyms get licenses from a government sports body, female gyms have no official authority overseeing them.

"The idea of female fitness is non-existent within our government," said Fouziah Alouni, a prominent women's rights campaigner.

"Depriving women of this is yet another way of marginalizing them. Give us a justifiable reason or leave woman alone. This is unbearable."

The result has been high rates of diabetes and even bone frailty among women, which the Ministry of Health says it wants to combat.

"Football and basketball are sports that require a lot of movement and jumping," Sheikh Abdullah al-Maneea, member of the official Supreme Council of Religious Scholars, said in a religious opinion published in Okaz newspaper Thursday.

He said such excessive movement may harm girls who are still virgins, possibly causing them to lose their virginity.

"There is a school of thought that unfortunately exists and which has a distorted interpretation of Islam," said Lina Al-Maeena, who organises basketball training in Jeddah.

Women's gyms can only exist inside hospitals as "health centres" supervised by the Ministry of Health but prices are so high, at least 1,000 riyals ($266) a month, that only the affluent can afford membership.

Cheaper versions have sprung up under name "beauty salon" or "studio" but now their future is in doubt.

Madawi Al-Hassoun of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce said the chamber has been trying for three years to find a government body prepared to take on board licensing female gyms.

"Some people don't like women to go out of their homes. This is a common struggle for female businesses in Saudi," she said.

British Council embarks on two major projects

2009-06-10T09:06:00.003-04:00

Mohammed Rasooldeen | Arab News

RIYADH: The British Council, under the umbrella of Social Partnership Projects, runs two large-scale programs, Springboard and Global Changemakers.

Springboard, a women’s self-development program, was introduced to Saudi Arabia in December 2004 as part of the British Council’s plans to develop women’s activities. It has attracted more than 600 Saudi women, all of whom found the program extremely beneficial in boosting their confidence and helping them to further develop their personal and working lives.

The program’s topics included understanding yourself; identifying your values; confidence building; setting goals; networking and support; assertiveness and work life balance.

“Springboard was a turning point in my life. In the past, my mind was full of worries and fear for the future. Springboard filled my inner soul with hope and desire to start a new life with a set of fixed goals to achieve,” one of Springboard’s participants said.

Several success stories that reflect the practical experience in the personal and work life of Springboard participants have emerged, illuminating the path for achieving self-recognition, and preparing the way for more successes.

At the same time, the Global Changemakers project, introduced to Saudi Arabia by the British Council, aims at enhancing the capacity of future leaders to meet global challenges. It links young community and future influencers from diverse backgrounds around the world in a sustainable global network. The participants are emerging talents, aged 16 to 25, who are committed to positive social change in their communities.

Joud Kashgari, an 18-year-old Saudi political science and economics student at the American University in Cairo, is among a group of 60 participants who attended the Guildford forum, representing Saudi Arabia, in the UK in January, 2009. The participants coming from different backgrounds and cultures shared their enthusiasm at Guildford and discussed challenging issues such as climate change, education, intercultural conflict and the devastating impact of poverty.

Additionally, Yazeed Al-Mujali, a 22-year-old global changemaker working at King Saud University as a teaching assistant, participated in the London Summit in April, 2009. Yazeed is one of a group of 20 activists — one representing each of the G-20 economies — all members of the British Council’s Global Changemakers network. The young people shared knowledge, ideas and best practices, and worked individually and together on projects that directly impact the lives of those in their local communities. “1001 School Links” project started in Saudi Arabia in 2006 with 12 private schools on board. The schools from Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam formed six partnerships with UK schools and showed great enthusiasm to work on the project. They have continued to lead on the program.

“This year to celebrate the successes of the Connecting Classrooms partnerships between schools in the UK and the Middle East including Saudi Arabia, a regional conference on Internationalism in Education was held in Kuwait at the end of March 2009,” Jim Scarth, director of the British Council in the Kingdom, said.

He added that the two-day conference was a valuable opportunity for the council to explore with its partners on common issues affecting schools in the UK and the Middle East and to look forward to the future for Connecting Classrooms as we work to strengthen its impact and reach in the Middle East.

“It wasn’t the first time we collaborated with the British Council when the 1001 school link project was introduced to our school. The whole idea has not only changed in name but also grew so fast into lots of inspiring experiences for our teachers and students. Connecting Classrooms is really helping all of us with becoming better global citizens,” said Omar Bouhlel, Dhahran Ahliya Schools — Dammam.

During year two of Connecting Classrooms another 11 partnerships were formed between 24 schools in Saudi and 12 schools in the UK. “I heard from colleagues in other schools that participated in the project how successful and motivating it is and therefore I was very happy when the British Council approached my school. I immediately asked the school management if I could be the project coordinator in the school,” said Mazen Bsat, Najd Private Schools, Riyadh.

Connecting Classrooms partnerships brought together “clusters” of three or more schools from the UK and the Saudi Arabia. Teachers and school leaders from partnership schools receive support and professional development opportunities to build skills in leading internationalism in education. Partnership schools initially meet at a Contact Seminar held in the Middle East. Teachers work together to develop joint curriculum project plans so that classes in their respective schools can learn about each other whilst exploring a mutually relevant topic together.

The Connecting Classrooms partnership is school to school. As the partnership matures and embeds, students throughout the school will learn about the cultural differences and similarities of their peers in their partner school. Through Connecting Classrooms, young learners in Saudi and the region and the UK will be supported to become true “global citizens.”

British Council embarks on two major projects

2009-06-10T09:06:00.002-04:00

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia Suffers Lack of Working Women as Oil Fluctuates

2009-06-09T16:52:00.002-04:00

By William Green

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Deep in the Arabian desert, hundreds of guests celebrate the birth of a city.

The Saudi government has flown them in on chartered planes to the northern city of Hail, then driven them for about half an hour in buses with police escorts to a giant marquee in the sand with a red carpet out front.

Inside, curtains with gold tassels adorn walls decorated with artists’ renditions of Prince Abdulaziz bin Mousaed Economic City, which the government says will be home to 300,000 people when it’s built.

After prayers from the Koran, the ceremony begins with a speech by Amr Al-Dabbagh, head of the ministry that has planned the city, who wears a formal cloak with gold trim. The audience -- all male, except for one woman -- sips tea and plucks chocolates off silver trays.

A film about the city offers a vision of the future: skyscrapers, science labs, kids with laptops in classrooms. As the speeches end, a Muzak version of “Nights in White Satin,” the song by the British group the Moody Blues, wafts from the loudspeakers.

Oil is no longer enough for Saudi Arabia, which is the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Population Surge

The country’s population has more than tripled to 25 million people from 7.3 million in 1975 -- and 57 percent of all Saudis are under the age of 25. As the population grows, the kingdom’s riches must be spread among more people: In 2008, per- capita gross domestic product was less than $19,000, versus $47,000 in the U.S. and $103,000 in Qatar.

To create jobs for its growing citizenry, the government wants to build cities and diversify into new industries. “The impetus to change has grown as the population has grown,” says Howard Handy, chief economist at Samba Financial Group, a Riyadh-based bank. “They’re very focused on how to find work for all these young people.”

The proposed economic city -- 720 kilometers (450 miles) north of the capital of Riyadh -- is one of four new metropolises that Saudi Arabia is planning in the hope of creating more than a million new jobs by 2020. “Their dream is to become a major industrial power beyond oil,” says Jean- Francois Seznec, who teaches at the center for contemporary Arab studies at Georgetown University in Washington. The Saudis are mainly looking at energy-hungry industries such as plastics, petrochemicals, aluminum and steel.

Oil, Terrorists

The success -- or failure -- of Saudi Arabia’s plans could affect the stability of the whole region, which supplies the world with much of its oil and has also been a breeding ground for terrorists. “It’s a very big, populous country in a risky neighborhood,” Handy says. “It’s the holder of a tremendous amount of oil resources that are of great importance to the global economy. So everybody has an interest in its political future and the development of its economy.”

Recognizing this strategic significance, U.S. President Barack Obama plans to visit King Abdullah in Riyadh tomorrow to discuss such issues as peace in the Middle East, terrorism and the price of oil. Obama has said he intends to tell the king that “huge spikes” in energy prices would hurt the interests of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

Sitting on nearly a quarter of the world’s known oil reserves, the kingdom can afford lavish dreams. As crude oil surged to a peak of $147 a barrel in July 2008, the state-owned oil and gas company, Saudi Aramco, generated as much as $1 billion a day in revenue.

Foreign Holdings

The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency -- the nation’s central bank -- built up its holdings of foreign assets such as bonds and currencies to $546 billion in October 2008 from $98 billion in 2003. Saudi Arabia’s total 2008 GDP of $482 billion dwarfed that of every other Middle Eastern nation.

For all of its wealth, Saudi Arabia has felt the effects of the global economic crisis as oil tumbled to $34 a barrel in December before rising to $68 yesterday. The four-city project is a scaled-back version of the original plan for six new urban centers. With banks and investors avoiding risk, more than $60 billion of projects have been canceled or delayed, Handy says.

The decline in oil prices and a 71 percent plunge in the nation’s Tadawul All Share Index since its February 2006 peak have shaken confidence. Handy expects GDP to shrink by 1.8 percent this year after growing 4.2 percent in 2008.

Restrictions on Women

Until recently, most Saudis haven’t needed to hold jobs. The government provides free education and health care and levies no personal income tax. An immigrant population of 6.5 million people performs almost all of the kingdom’s menial tasks. In 2007, just 4 million Saudis worked, according to the Ministry of Economy and Planning.

Only a fraction of the labor force is female, in part because of constraints placed on women by the government’s strict interpretation of Islam. They’re not allowed to mix in public with men who aren’t related to them, for instance, and are prohibited from driving cars.

With the population growing and inflation averaging 9.9 percent last year, there’s an economic need for more women to hold jobs. “Unless you’re very wealthy in Saudi Arabia, you cannot maintain a comfortable standard of living without two incomes,” says John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB, a Riyadh-based bank. “That is compelling women to work.”

Opening Up Insurance

Under its octogenarian ruler, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the country has been trying to modernize its economy. It wants to attract foreign investment -- including $500 billion for the new cities -- and has opened up industries such as insurance that were previously off-limits to foreign firms.

In its 2009 Ease of Doing Business report, the World Bank ranks Saudi Arabia 16th out of 181 countries, up from 67th in 2004. The kingdom attracted $24.3 billion in foreign direct investment in 2007, according to the latest available figures from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, compared with just $183 million in 2000.

Seznec says two big challenges remain: improving the quality of education and advancing the status of women in the workplace. “These are the two lines in the sand where the battle is taking place between the reformists and the religious forces in the kingdom,” he says.

King Abdullah favors change, talking in a 2007 speech of the need to create a “culture of labor,” for example. He also appointed a female deputy minister for girls’ education in February, the highest government rank a Saudi woman has attained.

First Co-Ed School

And he has authorized Saudi Aramco to create the country’s first co-ed school, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which will open in September.

Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country in the region moving to empower women. In May, neighboring Kuwait elected four women to its parliament.

The Saudi king and his ministers are “very logical and reasonable but are moving very slowly,” says Sherifa Zuhur, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.

“The majority of Saudi people are extremely conservative and not inclined to make any significant change.”

Saudi Arabia needs to prepare its youth for the workplace lest they become restive and more prone to terrorism, SABB’s Sfakianakis says. “These young people need to be empowered,” he says. “They can become untamed and uncontrolled if you fail to provide the right education, skills and jobs.”

Striking Oil

Since 1938, when American drillers in the eastern desert struck oil in a well called Dammam No. 7, Saudi Arabia’s economy has been entwined with those of its allies in the West.

For decades, the kingdom provided plentiful supplies at low prices: Throughout the 1960s, oil fetched less than $3 a barrel. Then in 1973, Saudi Arabia led an Arab embargo on oil sales to the U.S. and other supporters of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Within months, oil hit $12 a barrel, sending economic shock waves around the world.

The embargo was the start of an oil-fueled boom for Saudi Arabia. As the price soared to $39.50 by 1980, the year that war broke out between Iraq and Iran, newly wealthy Saudis became archetypes of excess, notorious in the West for squandering fortunes on everything from jewels to trophy properties.

In the 1980s, global growth slowed and oil sank to less than $10 a barrel in 1986. Then, in 2003, a new oil boom gathered pace: Prices climbed sevenfold by 2008, with rising consumption in China and India stoking concerns that oil reserves would not keep pace with demand.

Record State Budget

Saudi Arabia is still living on the spoils of that second boom. In December, King Abdullah announced a record $126.7 billion state budget for 2009. The money will pay for 1,500 new schools, 86 hospitals and the world’s largest women-only university.

Saudi Arabia has hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves while its debt amounts to only 15 percent of GDP.

“It’s really well positioned to face the global slowdown,” says Abdelhak Senhadji, the IMF’s mission chief for Saudi Arabia.

Still, the country remains vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of oil, which accounted for half of GDP and 90 percent of government revenue in 2007.

“The major economic challenge is to develop engines of growth that don’t have anything to do with oil and that work through the cycle, whether the price of oil is down or up,” says Brad Bourland, chief economist at Jadwa Investment, a Riyadh- based investment bank.

New Cities

To drive growth, new metropolises such as King Abdullah Economic City, beside the Red Sea, need help from foreign investors.

The city, designed to house 2 million people and employ 1 million, will cost $100 billion to build, says Fahd Al- Rasheed, CEO of Emaar, the Economic City, a Saudi-listed company formed in 2006 to oversee the development.

In addition to a “financial island” with office towers as high as 120 stories, the city would also include what the developers call Plastics Valley. Saudi Arabia can produce plastics cheaply because of its vast supply of petroleum, Al- Rasheed says.

In the desert heat, foreign laborers from countries such as India and Bangladesh toil in constructing the skeleton of King Abdullah city, burying sewage pipes, leveling roads and building the first blocks of offices and apartments.

Thousands of newly planted palm trees flank the road to the city’s main gate, which is decorated with an image of the king. There are no signs yet of the port or the towers.

Private Investors Sought

Al-Rasheed, 31, says the total cost of building the four cities will be about $157 billion. The government expects most of that to come from private investors ranging from plastics producers to mall developers to operators of private schools, which the government hopes to lure in part with tax breaks.

Early investors include the Kuwaiti company Al Mal Investment Co., appointed to develop Prince Abdulaziz bin Mousaed Economic City, and Abu Dhabi-based Rotana Hotel Management Corp., which plans to operate a luxury hotel there.

The government will provide land and fund a few projects such as the city’s train station.

Many other potential investors, strapped by the financial crisis, may not come. “The appetite for such things is really reduced,” Sfakianakis says. “It’s not an opportune time.” With hindsight, the Saudis’ original project now seems too ambitious, he says, evoking the grandiose developments conceived during the boom in Gulf neighbor Dubai.

“There was a little bit of Dubai-ness to it,” he says. “Let’s not build one; let’s build six.”

Demand for Homes

Al-Rasheed disagrees. He says rapid population growth will create demand for millions of new homes.

And the financial crisis has helped the cities because construction costs have tumbled along with the prices of property in the region, he says.

Some foreign companies are hoping to profit from building contracts in the cities. Cisco Systems Inc. is designing the technological infrastructure -- everything from broadband Internet connections to video surveillance systems to traffic control -- for all four of them.

Cisco will invest $250 million in Saudi Arabia during the next five years, says Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s chief globalization officer. Al-Dabbagh, the minister in charge of the cities, has asked Cisco to provide the world’s fastest broadband Internet connections.

“It’s one of these countries where we see a transformation going on,” Elfrink says.

Scottish Widows, KKR

Other investors are moving into the kingdom, too. Edinburgh-based Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Ltd. last year opened an asset management outpost in Riyadh.

“There are very real opportunities here that don’t exist in other parts of the Gulf,” says Peter Dorward, CEO of the company’s Saudi unit. “The Saudi economy is bigger than all of the other Gulf Cooperation Council economies put together.”

Scottish Widows hopes to manage assets for insurers that have been granted licenses to operate there, Dorward says. He’s also looking to create a fund to invest in property as population growth accentuates a shortage of homes, hotels and offices in cities such as Riyadh and Jeddah.

“Real estate has to be an opportunity when you’ve got that sort of demand,” he says.

The housing market should continue to grow in Riyadh as the population of 4.6 million increases by 3 percent a year, says a fourth-quarter review of the city’s property market by the Chicago real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

Another foreign company eying investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia is Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. In May, the leveraged buyout firm named Ford Fraker, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as a senior adviser.

No Alcohol, No Cinemas

Western executives who venture to Saudi Arabia enter a world bearing little relation to their own. The Saudi government bans alcohol, outlaws cinemas and forbids the public practice of any religion other than Islam.

The government blocks Web sites featuring pornography, gambling or anything else deemed to “violate the tenets of the Islamic religion or societal norms.” Adultery and homosexuality are crimes punishable by death.

Reporters Without Borders ranks the kingdom 161st out of 173 countries in terms of freedom of the press.

Even something as mundane as shopping is tightly regulated.

At the entrance to Riyadh’s Al Faisaliah Mall, a sign warns that Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are for “families only.” On those days, women eat with their husbands and children in the main area of the food court; at other times, when unmarried men might see them, women must sit in a “family section,” cordoned off by a wall.

Women Segregated

As in all public settings, every woman in the mall -- regardless of nationality -- must wear a black, floor-length cloak called an abaya. Saudi women must cover their hair with a hijab, or head scarf, and many cover their faces too.

Security guards keep control, repeatedly stopping and questioning single men. The kingdom also has a religious police force -- the Commission for the Protection of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice -- which patrols the streets to ensure that women cover their hair and don’t meet with men who aren’t related to them.

Such rules make it difficult for Saudi Arabia to attract foreign talent.

“I’ve lived in 11 countries, and this is off the charts,” says a Western banker in Riyadh who asked not to be named. “It’s a dreadfully dreary place.”

After two weeks there, his wife left to live overseas, while he stayed to finish an assignment that fascinates him. He says government ministers and rich Saudi businessmen live by their own rules in their opulent homes, routinely serving guests the finest wines.

‘I Have a Nightmare’

“It’s a badge of distinction to have an open bar,” he says. “It immediately declares he’s above the system.”

For him, the idea of being caught with so much as a bottle of Scotch is terrifying: “I have a nightmare that some day I’ll be driving home and I’ll get stopped by the police and thrown in jail.”

“Saudi Arabia has an advanced social fabric with many expatriates who enjoy the standard and quality of living here,” responds Fahd Hamidaddin, general director of corporate communications at the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority. “It’s different from other countries and is proud to be so. However, these differences have not been an obstacle to record growth in foreign direct investment flows or the rich trading history we have with Western economies.”

Homemade Wine, Machine Guns

Westerners who land well-paying jobs typically live in gated compounds reserved for foreigners. There, expats drink homemade wine and alcohol smuggled in from countries such as Bahrain, while Western women are free to wear shorts.

At Eid Villas in Riyadh, the amenities include tennis courts, bowling alleys and five swimming pools. With kids biking and rollerblading in the streets, it could easily be an American suburb -- if not for the gun-toting soldiers in bulletproof vests at the front gate or the armored vehicle with a machine gun mounted on its roof.

The soldiers are a legacy of a spate of terrorist attacks from 2002 to 2005, including one in 2003 in which suicide bombers killed more than 20 foreigners at three expatriate compounds.

In October, the government said it had indicted 991 suspected militants it considers responsible for 30 attacks. “There’s been a tremendous change in terms of security,” says economist Sfakianakis, who moved in 2004 to one of the compounds that was bombed the previous year.

Al-Qaeda

“They basically broke the back of al-Qaeda,” says Sir William Patey, Britain’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “I’m sure there are still people in the country who are radicalized and extreme, but the security forces are keeping pressure on them. It’s a much more difficult operating environment for terrorists than three or four years ago.”

Even so, the taint of terrorism persists for the country that gave the world Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We are battling misconceptions,” says Ahmed Abdulkarim, CEO of Cadre Economic Cities Co., a nonprofit that educates and trains Saudi workers for the new cities. “People do not know Saudi Arabia. If they do, they’ll be talking about terrorism and bombing and Osama bin Laden.”

Saudi Arabia isn’t a hotbed of terrorism, Abdulkarim says. “There are people who have done lots of misdeeds, and they have smeared the entire nation,” he says.

Abdulkarim, who worked in Europe for Procter & Gamble, says Saudi Arabia’s image is a recurring obstacle in talks with potential foreign investors.

Resumes from Dubai, London

Lately, hiring has become easier as resumes flow in from humbled cities such as Dubai and London, he says. In the past, foreigners expected hardship money to live in Saudi Arabia. “Now these people are coming with a pay cut,” he says.

Finding good workers domestically is just as difficult, says Mohammed Hafiz, CEO of Al-Sawani Group, a clothing retailer with about 1,500 salesmen. “You face the issue of education and commitment,” he says. “There’s very high turnover.”

Hafiz is sitting one evening at an outdoor restaurant in Jeddah with about a dozen other Saudi businessmen, discussing the biggest issues confronting them. “We always had money,” says Reda Islam, CEO of Future Waves, a Jeddah-based technology consulting firm. “Nobody needed to work. We were spoiled.”

Cadre’s Abdulkarim, whose mandate is to train 200,000 Saudis over 15 years to work at globally competitive levels, says state schools are out of touch with the needs of the marketplace because they emphasize memorization over problem solving.

Islamic Studies Focus

Georgetown’s Seznec says the curriculum focuses so heavily on Islamic studies that it neglects subjects such as math and science, which leaves students with inadequate practical skills.

At advanced levels, Saudi Arabia ranks 86th out of 131 countries in the quality of its math and science education, according to Harvard University’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness.

While women account for 57 percent of higher-education graduates, they make up only 15 percent of the workforce. Those that work tend to be limited to a few fields: 86 percent are in education, 6 percent are in health care and 4 percent are in public administration.

Of 5.8 million people working in the private sector, only 51,000 are Saudi women.

Women face tough restrictions in the workplace in addition to having to wear a hijab. “If there is a department which employs a woman who works in a job that does not suit her nature or leads to mixing with men, then this is wrong and should be avoided,” the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency wrote to banks last year.

‘A Man’s Country’

Working women also say they’re underutilized. “It’s still a man’s country,” says Amal Al Olayan, 34, who studied health sciences at a women’s college in Jeddah. Al Olayan began her career in 1997 as an unpaid employee at a hospital laboratory and now works in human resources for a mall developer.

“I did not do what I really wanted to do, but at least I did something for myself and my kid,” she says.

Al Olayan, who is divorced, says she’d move to England, where she spent much of her childhood, if it didn’t mean leaving her 12-year-old son, who lives with her ex-husband. Under Saudi law, the boy cannot see her without his father’s permission.

Until 2005, a Saudi woman couldn’t start a business without a male manager to handle responsibilities such as signing company checks. Since then, a handful of women have become well- known entrepreneurs, including Nahed Taher, who founded Gulf One Investment Bank in 2006 with $100 million in capital.

Supported by Colleagues

Taher, 40, spent part of her youth in Texas before earning a Ph.D. in economics at Lancaster University in the U.K. In 2002, Taher became a senior economist at National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, where she says she was the first woman in a building with 4,000 employees.

“I’ve honestly been supported all the way through -- by colleagues, by the government, by royals and by investors,” says Taher, who dresses in Western clothes and leaves her head uncovered at work.

Still, the authorities send mixed signals about women’s freedom. The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority invited female speakers such as Ireland’s former president, Mary Robinson, to a conference in Riyadh in January. But they were required to wear black abayas.

Saudi female audience members at first were segregated by a dividing wall from male attendees and foreign women. By the third day of the conference, though, several Saudi women had moved into the men’s section and were left undisturbed.

Less Insular

Saudis say that by their standards, things are moving rapidly. “We sit in the eye of the storm of change,” says Ammar Alkhudairy, CEO of Riyadh-based private equity firm Amwal AlKhaleej. “Ten years ago, we were much more insular.”

The government no longer decrees which companies can go public, he says. Today, it’s far easier for an entrepreneur to register a business, take it public and even sell stakes to overseas investors.

For the country to meet its economic ambitions, change will have to come faster, Georgetown’s Seznec says. “There’s not enough progress in modernizing education, and they’re not allowing women to develop fast enough in the workplace,” he says. “They’re aware of this, but it’s very, very slow.”

In the long run, the king and modernizing ministers are likely to prevail over the religious conservatives who have dominated areas such as education and the judicial system. “I’m convinced the reformists are winning the battle,” Seznec says. “They’re marginalizing the conservatives.”

Financial Crisis

The financial crisis poses a more immediate threat. Hurt by low prices and a drop in output, the portion of Saudi Arabia’s GDP that comes from selling oil will fall 10.5 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

At home, people who’ve lost money on stocks and real estate are cutting back on spending and investment. Even the powerful merchant families that dominate the private sector have suffered.

“I have friends who have literally lost hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Loay Nazer, chairman of the Nazer Group, a company in Jeddah with interests ranging from public relations to health care.

Alkhudairy agrees. “Everybody has seen a ghost,” he says. “Nobody is investing; nobody is buying.”

Once this crisis passes, the government expects that its efforts to modernize will drive a boom in foreign investment. “Saudi Arabia is a country that is aggressively changing its economic landscape,” says Hamidaddin of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority.

Grass and Flowers

Saudi Arabia is even trying to change its topography. In King Abdullah Economic City on the shores of the Red Sea, laborers are dredging canals in the sand and planting patches of lush grass and flowers.

Guides from Emaar show visitors architects’ models of villas as large as 12,000 square meters (129,167 square feet). Prospective buyers can also tour a show apartment with a trompe l’oeil mural that depicts the view residents could have of a fountain beside the sea.

Though change seems slow to outsiders, Saudis such as Nazer are confident that the modernized society the country is striving for will become a concrete reality. “The mood here is very cautious, not nervous,” he says. “You can’t be nervous when you’re sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world.”

Saudi Arabia: Saudi applauds women appointments to council

2009-06-09T16:41:00.001-04:00

Saudi leaders have commended the appointment of six women to the Shura Council, which oversees the implementation of Islamic laws and values, and are calling for women to be allowed to drive in the conservative Muslim country.

Women are needed to decide various issues, especially concerning families, said Sheikh Azeb bin Saeed Aal Mesbil, head of the Islamic affairs and judiciary committee at the Shura Council, daily Saudi Gazette reported on Thursday.

"It should be borne in mind that the life of our society has changed and so we at the council need to seek the opinions of experts, be they men or women. We need to listen to women on social and family issues," Aal Mesbil said.

Saudi Arabia regularly comes under fire globally for its strict values based on an austere form of Sunni Islam, which does not allow unmarried men and women to mix

Some senior clerics have recently called for women to be banned from the media and other forms of art. There is also a ban on women drivers.

But a leading Islamic thinker and former government minister has said women drivers are a necessity.

"What is best?" Mohammed Abdo Yamani questioned in a recent interview. "That we let women drive cars in safety or that we sit them next to male foreign drivers who might harm them?"

Another leader told a Saudi newspaper: "Driving has become a necessity for Saudi women. It is their right to drive - at least in cities and safe areas."

Maktoob Business

Saudi Arabia: Women delighted at Obama’s address

2009-06-09T16:31:00.002-04:00

Siraj Wahab | Arab News

ALKHOBAR: For women across the Muslim world, US President Barack Obama’s historic address from Cairo was nothing short of a blessing.

He acknowledged his respect for their personal choices and at the same time underscored his belief that their choices should be personal.

“God bless him,” said Asya Al-Ashaikh, founder and CEO of the Jeddah-based Tamkeen Development and Management Consulting. “He is a courageous man. It was a fascinating speech. He said all the right things. I am sure he will be able to translate all that he has spoken in Cairo into real action. His words will open a new chapter in our relationship with the US. He touched almost all the issues that concern us. What struck a chord within me was his focus on education and the empowering of women through education. ‘Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons.’ I will always remember that line forever. It is so true.”

Obama divided his speech into seven sections, mostly political.

However, the sixth issue focused entirely on women’s rights.

“I know there is debate about this issue,” Obama said. “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.”

He echoed that long-respected American principle of self-determination.

“I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles, but it should be their choice,” Obama said.

“I was impressed by his talk. His selection of Cairo University to deliver his all-important address carried a very important message. This university is a symbol of Arab history and culture, of our education and civilization and of modernity. It is a very important institution,” said Hatoon Al-Fassi, a Riyadh-based Saudi writer and historian.

“His statement that the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing is highly significant. It is a proposal that should be immediately grasped for the general good of the civilized world,” said Al-Fassi.

“Obama’s overtures to the Muslim world may still come with bogies attached, but his unequivocal support toward empowerment of Muslim women is a welcome sign indeed,” said Amna Khaishgi, a Dubai-based Pakistani broadcast journalist.

“Be it the West, Middle East or Asia, the role of women acquires the most critical dimension, and any progress will be incomplete without the participation of almost half the population on the planet. Women have always played and will continue to play a great role in the Muslim world but making it further participatory will surely be more than welcome.”

One Jeddah mother of four said although she was impressed by Obama’s speech she was unsure if his words would translate into policy decisions. “He is a genuine man but that doesn’t mean he will have an easy ride having his way in the United States,” said Aisha Al-Fassi.

“He is the president, yes, but there are other levers of power in the United States that are equally if not more important. Also, it remains to be seen how the American media will react. The pro-Israeli media in the US have exacerbated many of the problems. They have been feeding the American public with a steady anti-Arab and anti-Muslim diet. However, I have no doubt about the good intentions of Obama. I hope he succeeds in what he believes,” she said.

“His speech was excellent. It was comprehensive and balanced,” said Maha Akeel, managing editor of The Journal (issued by the Organization of the Islamic Conference). “Some might criticize that he repeated the usual stands of the US in support of Israel and the same rhetoric about peace and Islam and that we should wait for action instead of being happy with mere words.”

Some pundits cautioned Obama might be seen as lecturing the Muslim world, but he made it clear that the issue of women’s rights is a global one that many nations — including the US — need to address. Some women expressed hope that his words might advance that conversation in the Middle East.

“Obama’s speech to the Muslim world was one of hope and prospect. His address about women in the Muslim world was on the one hand one of respect toward religious and traditional differences and on the other hand one of encouragement to women,” said Sharia Abdullah Walker, a Jeddah-based Saudi student of international relations.

“It is time that women take their rightful role in their society, which is in demand for educated and professional women who can contribute to the growth and development of the society and humanity.”

“Obama’s views on women’s education are more than welcome. Certainly, it is one of the fundamental building blocks of growth and development,” said Sadia Khan, a student of Islamic studies at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. “It is indeed high time that the traditional and orthodox elements in the Muslim society assessed this very critical issue,” she said.

UAE: UAE is determined to continue in the path of women revivalism

2009-06-05T10:33:00.006-04:00

2009-06-04 20:52:33
WAM Geneva, Jun 04th, 2009 (WAM): The United Arab Emirates reiterated today before the world community, its determination to continue the march in the path of women revivalism.

Addressing the annual full-day discussion of the Human Rights Council on women's human rights today, the permanent representative of the UAE at the United Nations Office in Geneva Obeid Salem Al Za'abi said that since the formation of the UAE under the presidency of late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the leadership of the country was fully aware of the fact the woman is an equal partner in the process of national development.

The leadership of the country, inspired by its faith in gender equality, adopted a strategy of empowering women in cultural, social and economic fields, Al Za'abi said.

In an intervention made during the discussion, Al Za'abi portrayed how UAE worked to achieve the gender equality in rights and duties through guaranteeing women their right to ownership, employment, social security, economic and financial management, education, healthcare, earning, as well as many other rights.

In our country, the strong presence of women in the leadership roles and positions of decision making is not a new trend, but is a continuation of the march led by Her Highness Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak though her ardent work for the renaissance of the women, said Al Za'abi.

He briefly shed light on various institutions in the UAE established with an objective of empowering women to play the equal role in the nation building. Al Za'abi drew a few examples such as the General Women's Union (GWU), which was founded by HH Sheikh Fatima and the Family Development Foundation (FDF).

Women in UAE holds four seats in the federal cabinet and fills nine seats in a total of 40 seats in the Federal National Council, the country's supreme legislative body. This in addition to a large number of key posts women hold in various ministries and local governments. More over, women represent 59 percent of the total work force in the UAE and enjoy equal opportunity in the economic life, Al Za'abi pointed out.

He also asserted the country's commitment to continue this march under the leadership of President HH Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

The Human Rights Council's discussion on women's human rights was entitled equality before the law: concrete steps to further women's equality. The discussion focused on non-discrimination in the law, with a view to identifying concrete steps to further women's equality. The first part addressed institutional perspectives on equality before the law and the second part presented a wider perspective from academia and civil society.

Opening the discussion, Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said international human rights treaties prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and included guarantees to ensure that women and men enjoyed their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights on a basis of equality.

Despite this perception, global and national realities indicated that there was a wide gulf between international legal obligations and their implementation. Not only did inequality in the legal, civil, economic, political and social arenas violate international obligations, but it also compounded discrimination against women.

When race, religion, ethnicity, poverty, disability, social status, and other forms of discrimination were factored in, then the picture was one of even greater disparity. Moreover, inequality created a climate where violence against women and girls was considered acceptable.

Speaking in the first part of the discussion were Chile, India, Nigeria, Paraguay for MERCOSUR, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Norway, Czech Republic for the European Union, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Switzerland, Philippines for ASEAN, Slovenia, Ukraine, Luxembourg, Russian Federation, Lithuania, Iceland, Turkey, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Serbia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Algeria, China, Indonesia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina and South Africa.

Also speaking were the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain and the National Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, national human rights institutions. Non-governmental organizations speaking were the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Equality Now, Amnesty International and Women's International Democratic Federation.

The following non-governmental organizations also took the floor: Center for Women's Global Leadership, Worldwide Organization for Women, International Federation of Human Rights and Interfaith International.

International human rights treaties prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and included guarantees to ensure that women and men enjoyed their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights on a basis of equality.

WAM/AB

Opinion: Still looking for the western feminists

2009-05-22T11:01:00.001-04:00

BBC News Magazine
A POINT OF VIEW
Clive James

Women who believe liberal values exploit their sexuality have something much greater to fear - the jackboot of dictatorship, says Clive James.

In a week when the troubled parliament of Britain continued to swamp the front pages with tales of fiddle, fraud and the incredible disappearing Speaker, there wasn't much room for news about the parliaments of other countries, but there was one story in the middle pages that might have been calculated to remind us of why democracy really matters. The parliament in Kuwait has just acquired its first four women MPs.
Kuwait is by no means, a perfectly constituted democracy. As far as I can figure out, there is a ruling family whose Emir chooses the government and calls elections for parliament. But women have now been elected to the parliament, by popular vote. It should hardly need saying that this would have been unlikely to happen if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to continue to rule the country by terror, but let's leave his awful memory aside for a moment, if we can, and dare to put forward a general reflection.
Democracy is the best chance for women. Or if that sounds too naive, too pro-western perhaps, then let's put it this way. The absence of democracy is seldom good news for women. Or, to get down to bedrock, if women can't vote for women, then they haven't got many weapons to fight with when they seek justice.
My own view, which I'm ready to hear contested, is that this is the main reason why some feminists in the west have been so slow to get behind those women in the world's all too numerous tyrannies who have to risk their lives to say anything.
It's just too clear a proof that men have a natural advantage when it comes to the application of violence. When you say that women have little chance against men if it comes to a physical battle, you are conceding that there really might be an intractable difference between the genders after all.
Ideological feminists in the West were for a long time reluctant to concede this, because they preferred to believe that there was no real difference, and that all female handicaps were imposed by social stereotyping that could be reversed by argument. But this belief was really possible only in a society where the powers of argument had a preponderance over the powers of violence.
And since many western feminists are still convinced that the social stereotyping of the West is the product of fundamental flaws within liberal democracy itself, they have a tendency to believe that undemocratic societies are somehow valuable in the opposition they offer to the free countries which the feminists are so keen to characterise as not free enough.
I have to pick my words carefully here, because this is the touchiest theme I have ever tackled in these broadcasts, but I do think it's high time to say that if feminist ideologists find liberal democracy unfriendly, they might consider that the absence of liberal democracy is a lot less friendly still.
Helping to give me courage, here, finally, is that quite a lot of women are already saying it. But they tend not to be western pundits. They tend to be women out there, in the thick of a real battle not just an argument. Why their bravery doesn't shame more of our feminist pundits I hesitate to say. It certainly shames me.
This importance of democracy, or at any rate of an amelioration of tyranny, should have become clear when, after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the first provisional government in Iraq included women members. But it didn't become clear, because too many of our commentators wanted to call the provisional government a puppet government, under the control of the US.

Vote best hope
Even as it became steadily more clear that nothing in Iraq was under the control of the US, feminists in the West continued to do a stunning job of ignoring the risks that women in Iraqi public life were running. An Iraqi female MP could get murdered and it was held to be a natural result of US imperialism, almost as if she had been murdered by George W Bush in person.
But she hadn't been. She had been murdered by local men who were making an example of her. They feared what she would bring: the spectre of women claiming an importance equal to that of men.
Last year the excellent Australian feminist journalist Pamela Bone finally died of cancer, but while she was still fighting it she published, in 2005, in response to what she regarded as the thunderous silence that had greeted the stand taken by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an article called "Where are the western feminists?" What Pamela Bone meant was, that she was amazed why so many of her colleagues couldn't see, or didn't want to see, that democracy was the best hope for women.
Pamela Bone was well aware that there is a necessary quarrel about how democracy can be brought about in countries that don't have it, and I hasten to concede that of the two possible main views about the invasion of Iraq, for example, my own view, in favour, soon became the minority view. But Pamela Bone couldn't see how there could be any doubt that women in the countries without democracy were in a battle that they were bound to lose if the men could prevail by force.
Men will always monopolise the means of violence if they can. Women can learn to shoot guns, but there are no all-female armies, and even the Amazons were probably a myth. Women, on the whole, would naturally like to do something else, whereas an army, for too many men, is a home away from home, and often their only home.
It's the only home for the junta in Burma. The junta is in the news again this week because it found a pretext for locking Aung San Suu Kyi into prison, instead of just leaving her helpless under house arrest. The terms of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest were that she should receive no visitors, and some poor demented American

Slow martyrdom
Vietnam veteran made sure that the terms were violated by swimming to her front door.
Like many a head-case he probably just wanted to discuss his theories about how aliens control everything, but the all-male military junta in Burma really does control everything and here was their chance to dump Aung San Suu Kyi into jail until the next election is over.
Aung San Suu Kyi not only has the stature, she has the right, to lead the government of her county. If the public got a chance to say so, she would do so, and bring immeasurable improvement not only to Burma but the whole area.
I say all this because in some moment of optimism I allowed my name to get put on the masthead of the organisation in this country that campaigns for her release, the Burma Campaign, but I have done nothing else for her before today, mainly because I don't believe that my going to dinner with like-minded humanitarians is likely to help much.
What she needs is an invading army, but even if there were one available, armed intervention, since the Iraq incursion, has been out of fashion: no doubt with good reason, but those appalled by the moral cost of toppling a tyrannical regime are still stuck with counting the moral cost incurred by leaving it alone.
The regime in Burma will most likely go on being left alone. Aung San Suu Kyi's slow martyrdom makes the cost obvious. The current best plan for getting her sprung is to bring persuasion to bear on India so that India will bring pressure to bear on the junta, and so on until she grows old and grey.

A better world
Being who she is, she grows old slowly, and at the age of 63 she looks like her own daughter, but time is still against her. If time is all you've got going for you, it isn't much. What justice needs, when it is ranged against naked force, is a contrary force, and the fact that there isn't one is enough to reduce the onlooker to despair.
Despair can coarsen one's judgment. I knew enough about what Saddam Hussein and his talented son Uday were doing to women to want that regime toppled. The price of doing so might have seemed too high, but at least now, six years later, it is no longer official policy to rape a woman in front of her family. There may be unofficial forces still on the loose in Iraq who would like to do that, but the government no longer does it.
Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan still seems worth it when you have read about what the Taliban want to do with any woman who seeks an education, but it's easy to despair when you think of how hard it is to stop them.
Sometimes despair overwhelms us when we read of just a single so-called honour crime in which the men of a family have ruined the life of a daughter for what seems no reason at all, and the men walk free because that's the culture, and the culture runs the government. I felt despair when Aung San Suu Kyi got taken off to jail, and for her I thought I had no despair left.
But heartbreak feels out of place when we see this news story about the four women MPs in Kuwait, and there's a photo of one of them, rejoicing with her friends. I'm looking at the photo right now. Her name is Aseel al Awadhi. She has a merry face and an exultantly elevated thumb. It will be a better world for all of us if women like her are free to do well, and if she could hear us it would be our simple duty to say good luck to you. And another duty, alas, to say: mind how you go.

UAE: UNICEF to base child protection programme at GWU

2009-05-18T17:04:00.000-04:00

WAM Abu Dhabi, 18th May 2009 (WAM) -- The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has taken the premises of the UAE General Women's Union (GWU) as venue of its child protection programme.

The move falls under the cooperation agreement signed between the GWU and UNICEF.

Meanwhile, Noura Al Suweidi, GWU Director, received today Dr Ayman Abu Laban, UNICEF representative to the Gulf region, and Lara Hussein the UNICEF's Child Protection Officer in the UAE.

Al Suweidi said the GWU was ready to offer all possible assistance to enable the programme carry out strategy towards welfare of children being executed by the GWU with local stakeholders with assistance of the UNICEF.

Saudi Arabia: Shoura call raises virtual storm

2009-05-13T14:00:00.001-04:00

Omaima Al-Fardan & Fatima Sidiya | Arab News

JEDDAH: Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, the head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Makkah region, is generally supportive of the Shoura Council’s call to include women as members of the commission. He said there was need for a “body that can penetrate women’s groups such as those in the education and business fields.”

“There is no other monitoring body that does this job (except the commission). I believe the presence of women, after educating them and teaching them the necessary procedures, would produce positive results,” he added.

The Shoura Council recently approved the inclusion of women members in the commission. The approval not only upset certain groups in the Kingdom but also sparked heated debates in Saudi society. Both women and men were quick to point out what they saw as the inherent contradiction in the move and they were vocal in their arguments against the recommendation.

The primary argument they presented was that the commission would go against itself by including women as members. The commission in general opposes women working and also considers the presence of women in public places as “khulwa” (unrelated men and women being together). How then could women serve as members of the commission? they asked.

The blatant inconsistency was pounced upon by Amina Kashgari, a Saudi columnist in Al-Watan newspaper. She asked: “Would it be necessary for a female commission member to have a legal guardian with her?”

Kashgari also raised the point that the commission is instrumental in opposing women working in the government sector and, more recently, it has also opposed women selling lingerie in shops.

She said that approving the Shoura’s recommendation was one thing but that its implementation could be catastrophic. It would give commission members an opportunity to go into women’s only groups and private ceremonies and would raise many questions about individual freedom. “If this recommendation is implemented, it will prove an obstacle for development and reform that the various (government) bodies in the country are working for,” added Kashgari.

A'azib Al-Misbil, the head of the Islamic, Judicial and Human Rights Affairs Committee in the Shoura Council, said such a recommendation cannot be implemented. "I, as head of the committee, voted against the recommendation, because the commission's work should be only fieldwork," Misbil said, adding that the council had approved the recommendation.

According to him, the recommendation to include women as commission members was made by three committee members, and was not a primary recommendation. Nonetheless, the council adopted it. Al-Misbil said the commission denied any plans to establish a women's section when asked about it in the Shoura Council.

The head of the Social, Family and Youth Affairs Committee of the Shoura Council, Talal Al-Bakri, also warned at the council session on Monday about approving the recommendation. Despite his objection, the recommendation was approved. Al-Bakri said that commission members would fall into the same trap they accuse people of concerning khulwa. Al-Bakri added that such a recommendation could not be implemented unless women were allowed to drive in the Kingdom.

Rights activist Suhaila Zain Al-Abidin said it would be a "disaster" if "conservative ignorant women" began going into women's sections and setting off "catastrophic incidents". She said Islam certainly allowed women to promote virtue; indeed, it is considered one of their rights. This is clearly stated in the Qur'an. But she raised her concern about the "selection of women."

"I fear they would be like those in the mosques of Makkah and Madinah. They are conservative and accuse others of being nonbelievers," she said, adding women commission members must know the Shariah and must be moderate and treat all with respect and consideration.

Zain Al-Abidin said that before approving the recommendation, there should be firm procedures and regulations put in place in order to prevent women from infringing public privacy and rights.

Ahmad Al-Ghamdi was cautious in his approval of the move. He said the recommendation would not be implemented unless it was approved by the ministerial council. Al-Ghamdi said when he backed the move, he realized that society needed "awareness and guidance" and not the commission itself. He added that every new idea needed "complete procedures and administrative comprehension."

The Shoura Council also approved an increase of 20 percent in the salaries of commission members who do fieldwork. Al-Ghamdi justified the pay hike, saying that the commission members' fieldwork was exhaustive and tiring. "There is a difference (in workload) between these commission members (who do field work) and others who only do administrative work."

Zain Al-Abidin, on the other hand, said that the pay hike might result in more unwelcome field inspections by the commission.

Saudi Arabia: Women may get jobs in judiciary

2009-05-13T14:00:00.000-04:00

Saudi Gazette
By Adnan Shabrawi

JEDDAH – Justice Minister Muhammad Al-Issa revealed Tuesday a study into the possibility of allocating offices for women in courts and “channels for appointing women in the judiciary.”
The minister was speaking at a function organized by the National Committee for Lawyers here.
Office jobs in the judiciary can be as managers, supervisors, courtroom clerks, IT technicians and specialists, research librarians, etc.
So far no woman has been appointed as a judge in Saudi Arabia and Saudi scholars have said that women should not be burdened with such a job.
Al-Issa, in an interview with the Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat last week, was asked about the chances of a woman becoming a judge in Saudi Arabia, whether this was “possible or impossible.”
The minister replied: “The answer goes beyond possibility or impossibility; we all know that some countries that do not follow Islamic Shariah do not have female judges even today. In many countries there are only a few female judges in comparison to male judges, for well known reasons. It’s not due to any fault in women and does not reduce their importance. Only a short while ago we decided on the possibility of women becoming lawyers, which is an important profession, and takes into account scientific and mental potential, and other skills.”
Elaborating on “well-known reasons,” he said: “I mean the natural condition of women, and the family role that a woman plays that men are unable to fulfil. I am talking about the clear physiological differences between a man and a woman. This is why some countries that are not governed by Shariah law do not have any reservations with regard to their reluctance to allow women to become judges.”
Bahrain is the only Gulf country to allow women to become judges, and the UAE is reportedly considering such a move.
Saudi Arabia is in the early stages of implementing judicial reforms, starting with developing the infrastructure.
Al-Issa said Tuesday that the Ministry would float tenders for the construction of a series of specialist courts in the major cities – including labor, commercial and personal statute courts – in addition to housing complexes.
“The ministry has 2,000 vacant posts which will be filled by highly trained experts in the judiciary,” he said.
Al-Issa also said that the ministry is in the process of issuing a new regulation governing the selection of judges by the Higher Judiciary Council. – Okaz/ SG

Yemen: SCER, IFES discuss electoral cooperation ties

2009-05-13T13:49:00.000-04:00

SABA- 13 May 2009
Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER) and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) discussed here on Wednesday aspects of the bilateral cooperation in the fields of democracy and election. SCER members Mohammed al-Sayani and Abdu al-Jandi held talks with the director of IFES office in Yemen Peter Williams on the possibility of supporting the SCER plans and programs during the next phase in fields of institutional building, training, rehabilitation and electoral awareness as well as promoting women's participation in the elections.

Kuwait: Al-Naki hosts political symposium on women's rights

2009-05-13T13:21:00.002-04:00

Kuwait Times
By Nawara Fattahova

KUWAIT: Lawyer and former candidate Najla Al-Naki held an electoral symposium with candidates and intellectuals at her office in Salmiya on Monday evening. The symposium was related to the coming elections and the discussions focused mainly on women's rights. The speakers also focused on some of the mistakes made by the previous parliament.

According to some of the speakers, approving women's political rights did not come at the right time. Women gained their political rights in the summer of 2005 and they had less than two months to prepare for elections, which, according to writer Ghaneema Al-Fahad was "mission impossible." "If we want to paint a room, it needs more than a month to dry. The elections are always held in summer," Al-Fahad said.

Kuwaiti women are oppressed in comparison to men. "Men always receive support, such as those candidates who received checks from outside Kuwait. Meanwhile, nobody is supporting the female candidates. Why doesn't the government support women? There are many creative Kuwaiti women who were not supported. If any woman is elected in this election, it will be thanks to her tribe that supports her. But the tribe doesn't give me a house or salary. We are proud to be loyal to the tribe, but our main loyalty must be to Kuwait," she added.

Although there is democracy in the West, women still have not reached equal status with men. "In European countries, the number of female politicians in parliaments is much less than men, although the women there have reached senior positions such as the post of prime minister. In Kuwait, women also occupy many key positions, and I expect that they will reach the parliament in this election," said Farhan Al-Farhan.

The speech of HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah was very emotional and impressed many people. "I was impressed by the Amir's speech so I decided to run in this election. I think we need new people to enter the parliament. I didn't prepare a plan and I don't have political ambitions, but I believe I can help in making a positive change. There are many MPs who caused strain, problems and corruption in parliament, and this is wrong and has to be changed," said Manal Al-Ahmad, candidate from the secon
d district.

Manal has an opinion in regard to solving some of the political problems. "We should start with the family, and the woman is at the center of it. Women should take their rights; in this way, she will be able to help successfully raise coming generations. The second step is to choose qualified teachers for our children, especially in the first grades of education. The bedoon issue is a time bomb that should be solved. They don't have any other country besides Kuwait, and they don't have the Kuwaiti national
ity. They should at least be given basic human rights. Finally, the problem of citizens with two nationalities is a catastrophe and should be solved," she added.

Voters must make the right decision by voting for the better candidate. "To have a good parliament, our choice must not be based on sectarian or tribal aspects. Each voter has the right to vote for four different people. So, if the husband or father of any woman told her to vote for a certain person related to her, she can give him one vote and she still has three votes that can be used according to her beliefs," said Abdullah Al-Hajiri, candidate in the third district.

People complain about the parliament's performance, but they were the ones who voted for them. "We can blame ourselves for the problems happening now. About 56 percent of the voters are women, and not a single one of them succeeded in winning. Fifty MPs are men who succeeded in winning although men make up only 44 percent of voters. There are certain traditions followed in Kuwaiti society that makes the woman a follower of the man, but she doesn't have to be without an opinion at all. It is not true if the
y say that she was pulled to vote for a certain candidate because she has free will in front of the ballot box, where nobody sees her except God. There she can make the right choice," said political activist Dr Ayid Al-Mana.

Kuwait: Kuwaiti women win first parliamentary seats

2009-05-13T13:17:00.000-04:00

KUWAIT CITY – Official results announced on state television show that Kuwaiti women have won parliamentary elections for the first time, garnering four seats. The Victory is resounding in this conservative Persian Gulf country where parliaments have been men-only for almost five decades.
Women were granted political rights in 2005. They failed to make any gains in two previous elections.
According to partial official results read by judges Sunday, Massouma al-Mubarak, the country's first female Cabinet minister, became a lawmaker. She is an independent Shiite. The other winners were Westernized liberal Aseel al-Awadhi, women's rights activist Rola Dashti, and independent university teacher Salwa al-Jassar.

Saudi Arabia: Saudi judge says it's OK for men to beat wives

2009-05-12T14:15:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press
By ABDULLAH SHIHRI – May 11, 2009

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — A Saudi judge told a conference on domestic violence that a man has the right to slap a wife who spends money wastefully and said women were as much to blame as men for increased spousal abuse, a Saudi newspaper reported.

The remarks do not carry the weight of law, as they were made out of court. But such public pronouncements by Saudi judges — who are also Islamic clerics — are often widely respected.

A rights activist decried the remarks and said she and other campaigners viewed them as the latest setback in women's efforts to gain the right to vote, drive, freely participate in politics and be protected from violence. Activists have become more vocal in recent years in their criticism of cases involving women's rights, including what many see as the religious police's harsh enforcement of the segregation of sexes.

"If a person gives 1,200 Saudi riyals ($320) to his wife and she spends 900 riyals ($240) to purchase an abaya (head-to-toe robe) from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment," Judge Hamad Al-Razine was quoted as saying by the English-language Arab News newspaper on Sunday.

The comments at a recent conference were given as part of an explanation for an increase in domestic violence in the country. The judge said women were equally responsible for the increase, the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The paper did not say exactly when the conference was held. The judge could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Women in the audience loudly protested the judge's remarks, the newspaper said.

Saudi Arabia bars women from voting, except for chamber of commerce elections in two cities in recent years, and no woman can sit in the kingdom's Cabinet. Women also cannot drive or travel without permission from a male guardian.

Sohaila Zenelabideen Hammad, spokeswoman of the Saudi National Center for Human Rights, told the Associated Press on Monday that the judge's remarks are reason for concern for being "too extreme."

"It is not acceptable, it is even forbidden in Islam to beat a woman on her face. ... No matter what the woman does, the man has no right whatsoever and under any circumstances to beat his wife on the face," said Hammad, who was not at the conference.

"Regrettably, there is a common understanding in the Arab and Islamic world that man is the master who looks down on the woman and has the right to do whatever he wants to her. This is wrong," Hammad said.

She said she was to attend a meeting later Monday with members of UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children, to discuss the issue.

Associated Press Writer Omar Sinan contributed to this report from Cairo.

Saudi Arabia: Workshops offer over 500 women top business tips

2009-05-12T14:12:00.000-04:00

Walaa Hawari | Arab News

RIYADH: More than 500 Saudi businesswomen and investors are attending four training workshops here today and tomorrow.

Consultants in international trade and international law will conduct them at the 4th Saudi Businesswomen Forum entitled “Active Direction in the Business Environment to Face Economic Changes.”

The workshops have been organized by the women’s branch of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry and will include outlining procedures for cooperation with international companies as promising investing opportunities for Saudi women. “The forum aims at enhancing the qualifications of the Saudi businesswomen and investors in the face of the rapid changes the Saudi economy is undergoing through activating the powerful economic elements in the Kingdom and achieving development and economic ambitions on the long run,” said Huda Al-Juraisi, director of the organizing committee of the forum. Legal trainers will introduce international trade law, issues pertaining to contracts, content of trade contracts and means to solve disputes in international trade contracts.

According to Al-Juraisi, the forum is considered one of the biggest women’s economic, educational and cultural gatherings in the Kingdom.

“This year’s generous gesture by the businesswomen of sponsoring 150 students to attend the workshops and benefit from the presentations and experiences of the businesswomen free of charge, reflects the understanding of social responsibility which is part of the forum’s mission to support those interested in entering the business and investment world,” said Al-Juraisi.

Areej Bint Homoud Al-Ibraheem, owner of Nawart Najd PR Company — one of the sponsors — praised the Chamber’s efforts to involve businesswomen in economic progress.

Yet as a response to whether the forum is an opportunity for the businesswomen to put forward their demands, Al-Ibraheem says this forum is more of an educational experience.

“The forum is an occasion to present new visions and educate businesswomen about the recent economic status and inform them of the proper ways and means to face them,” explained Al-Ibraheem indicating that there are other events and conferences concerned with coming up with proposals and recommendations and forwarding them to officials.

Amal Zahed, owner of Secas Trading, said the forum offered a chance to sound the voice of Saudi businesswomen. “Such meetings reflect on the demands and needs of businesswomen, and the observation is passed on to the decision-makers to review,” says Zahed. “We should try and make ourselves heard through forums and meetings.”

Kuwait: Al-Awadhi expresses her support for the bailout plan

2009-05-12T14:10:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times
Published Date: May 12, 2009
By Nisreen Zahreddine, Staff writer

KUWAIT: Third district candidate Aseel Al-Awadhi renewed her refusal to write off debt during an open debate at Ahmad Al-Adwani School in Al-Adailiya. In a statement to her supporters, Al-Awadhi defended the bail-out plan presented by the government and refused to describe it as a "Whales Law" and complained that the final grilling to the government by some MPs did not actually hold a valuable enough case to be worth it.

Al-Awadhi explained that there was no justice in debt write-off for the loans of citizens because they varied in value, furthermore it opened the door for similar steps later on and it would cause loss in government funds. She went further to remind the audience that if President Barack Obama implemented what he said about finding a new trend that doesn't depend totally on GCC oil, Kuwait would be one of the major countries facing a huge drop in revenues, tightening the government's budget. She advised peo
ple to save government money instead of thinking about how to spend it on them without referring to just laws organizing monetary issues.

At the same time, Al-Awadhi opposed calling the government stimulus plan a "Whales Law" and advised her supporters to be above personal interests for the sake of the public's interest. She explained that this plan would save the economy as a whole and that it did not aim to save certain companies. Moreover, the plan helps companies that have liquidity problems as a result of the drop in assets' value which is not a result of their bad performance but one of the effects of the global economic crisis on the
country's economy. Besides, this plan assists the banking sector and spares its drop, she said.

Regarding the grilling presented by MPs to the government, Al-Awadhi commented that those grillings were meaningless and empty and did not hold any valuable cause, though grilling is an MP right guaranteed by the Kuwaiti constitution. Al-Awadhi suggested establishing a parliamentary assembly called the "Values Assembly" which would watch the legislative corruption and suggest suitable punishments.

Al-Awadhi referred to some laws that are unfair regarding women and promised to work in the parliament to amend such laws to guarantee women's rights.

Kuwait: Women benefit from media coverage

2009-05-12T14:07:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times

KUWAIT: Two lecturers at Kuwait University agreed that women were the ones who mostly benefitted from media coverage of parliamentary campaigns, because it was an easy option for those who found it difficult to attend rallies. Mass communication professor Dr Khalid Al-Qihs said that there was a close link between democracy and media, which helped many women in their evaluation of the agenda of candidates. "The conservative nature of many Kuwaiti families makes the movement of women among campaign circles l
imited in some cases, which gives importance to media coverage of rallies and gatherings," he explained.

Al-Qihs noted that democracy and free media were two faces of a single coin, and media helped voters make the right decision and provided them with all the necessary information about those involved in the race and the performance of the government. Moreover, he said that the district system amendment made it more difficult for a candidate to communicate directly with voters, which in turn prompted many to seek the media. On her part, mass media professor Dr Heba Al-Musallam explained that although women a
ccounted for the greatest percentage of people benefiting from media coverage of campaigns, it remained "an insufficient source (of information).

She noted that different media outlets were government by their own policies and thus focused on the candidates that fell in line with these policies, explaining that the "media framing" theory revolved around the media's focus on one aspect and overlooking others. Al-Musallam also noted that the short campaigning time was not enough for candidates to present their agendas to voters in a thorough manner, and again the media offered a suitable alternative. The launch of satellite channels that were speciali
zed in following candidates' campaigns and seminars is also useful, she said. - KUNA

Kuwait: NA candidate organizes symposium for women

2009-05-12T14:04:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times
Published Date: May 12, 2009
By Nawara Fattahova, Staff writer

KUWAIT: Former MP and third district candidate Adel Al-Sarawi held a symposium for women at his diwaniya in Keifan on Sunday evening. He was a member of the parliament in 2003, 2006 and 2008.

Kuwait has the ability to be better than it is today. "We now have the depressive feeling of the present situation that came from the poor performance of both the parliament and the government. People are now wondering what the future strategies are for work in the coming period," Al-Sarawi said during the symposium.

Optimism is the first step to change the current situation. "We won't discuss who is responsible; we want to learn from our mistakes and not repeat those we have made in the past. I believe we should be optimistic about the qualified manpower and good legislation we have in Kuwait. We should believe that better times are coming," he added.

The Kuwaiti Constitution was issued in 1962. "The average age of those who wrote the Constitution was about 40, which means they were born around 1920. At that time, their education level was not high, but the Constitution is so complex that it can solve all of our present problems. We must deal with it seriously and we must protect this heritage so that it can be passed on to the next generations," Al-Sarawi said.

The negative political situation has caused many people to become frustrated. "The people feel resentment from all the problems. Some think they can affect the voters and persuade them not to vote, and this is a great mistake. I'm very optimistic and I believe that these elections will witness even greater participation than before. The challenge is not to give them the chance to destroy the democracy by not voting," he noted.

The future period is important for the nation. "Wrong practices in the parliament reflected a view of legislative corruption. There is no control over MPs. Many of them don't attend sessions of parliament or committee meetings, so where do they go? Some of them just say they discussed certain issues but they do not give any details because they did not make any effort," Al-Sarawi maintained.

He then proposed some solutions to avoid repeating the previous problems. Saying that there should be a strong government that is able to defend its opinions and not back down. He concluded, "We should have ministers that participate in making decisions and who are responsible for those decisions, not just their execution. The parliament and the government must cooperate according to Article no. 50 of the Constitution. As there are no political parties, the government should have the majority of the parlia
ment. It's not possible to carry out any projects without applying Article 50 by cooperating between the powers.

Saudi Arabia: Saudi judge: It's OK to slap spendthrift wives

2009-05-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

By Mohammed Jamjoom
CNN

(CNN) -- Husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi judge said recently during a seminar on domestic violence, Saudi media reported Sunday.

It is OK to slap Saudi women who spend too much, a judge has told an audience.

Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily newspaper based in Riyadh, reported that Judge Hamad Al-Razine said that "if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment."

Women in the audience immediately and loudly protested Al-Razine's statement, and were shocked to learn the remarks came from a judge, the newspaper reported.

Arab News reported that Al-Razine made his remark as he was attempting to explain why incidents of domestic violence had increased in Saudi Arabia. He said that women and men shared responsibility, but added that "nobody puts even a fraction of blame" on women, the newspaper said.

Al-Razine "also pointed out that women's indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country," it added.

Domestic violence, which used to be a taboo subject in the conservative kingdom, has become a hot topic in recent years. Groups like the National Family Safety Program have campaigned to educate the public about the problem and help prevent domestic abuse.

Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN that Saudi women routinely face such attitudes.

Don't Miss
Report: Saudi girl granted divorce
"This is how men in Saudi Arabia see women," she said in a telephone interview from the Saudi city of Dahran. "It's not something they read in a book or learned from a friend. They've been raised to see women this way, that they're less than a person."

Al-Huwaider added that "I'm not surprised to see a judge or a religious man saying that - they've been raised in the same culture - a culture that tells them it's ok to raise your hand to a woman that this works."

Another Saudi judge, in the city of Onaiza, was the source of a separate recent controversy: he twice denied a request from the mother of an 8-year-old girl that the girl be granted a divorce from her 47-year-old husband.

Last month, after human-groups condemned the union, the girl was granted the divorce.

Yemen: Program of supporting women's access to parliament launched

2009-05-11T14:42:00.000-04:00

SANA'A, May 10 (Saba) - The Cultural Development Foundation in cooperation with the Partnership Program of the European Union inaugurated here on Sunday the program of supporting women's access to parliament.

Chairwoman of the foundation Raufah Hassan reviewed the situation of the women political participation and activities of the foundation in order to promote this participation.

She also pointed out to the objective of establishing "supporters networks" which was set up to create awareness over the importance of women participation in political life as well as to increase the number of women candidates for elections.

For his part, the European Commission charge de affairs Michele Cervole d'UrSo noted to the important role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in finding solutions to support the representation of the women in Parliament.

The executive director of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) Peter Williams reviewed the experiences of a number of European and third world countries in this area, affirming the need to seek a support for the Yemeni women regardless of the electoral support.

He considered the Quota system is the best in Yemen.

FJ/AH
Saba

Kuwait: Road to Assembly I

2009-05-11T14:40:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times
Published Date: May 10, 2009
By B Izzak, Staff Writer

KUWAIT: Kuwaitis go to the ballots on May 16 to elect the 13th National Assembly and the second in a year. Sixteen women are among 210 candidates competing for the 50 seats in five constituencies. Each constituency elects 10 members while each voter is allowed to cast a maximum of four votes.

Here is a detailed analysis on each electoral district, highlighting the main races, political groups, main candidates and other issues.
First Constituency
Sharq-Rumeithiya-Salmiya

The first constituency has 19 residential areas starting from Sharq in Kuwait City to Mishref in the south. The main areas are Rumeithiya, Salwa, Salmiya, Bayan, Hawally, Dasma, Shaab and Daiya. The district has 69,132 voters, including 37,519 women and 31,613 male voters. The largest area in terms of voters is Rumeithiya with 15,752 voters, Salwa with 12,333 and Bayan with 10,838 voters. The constituency is the third largest in terms of size of voters after the fifth and fourth districts.

Forty-five candidates are contesting the elections including all the 10 MPs in the outgoing National Assembly in addition to three former MPs from previous assemblies. There are also two female candidates - former minister Maasouma Al-Mubarak and prominent women activist Fatima Al-Abdali.

The constituency is divided almost equally between Sunni and Shiite voters. It has a large contingent of tribal voters from the Awazem tribe. The constituency also has a good number of liberal and Sunni Islamist voters, and a strong presence of well-known Kuwaiti families like the Awadhi and Roumi.

Two main lists are fighting the election officially. Both are Shiite while the rest are contesting on individual bases. The National Islamic Alliance (NIA) and its allies are fielding four candidates. They are former MPs Adnan Abdulsamad and Ahmad Lari of the NIA, former minister and MP Youssef Al-Zalzalah and the representative of the Hasawi Shiites Hamad Taher Buhamad.

The list is tipped to bag at least three seats because it has strong support among Shiite voters. The addition of Zalzala's and Buhamad's supporters to the NIA voters has the list in a very strong position. The second list is Peace and Justice which is fielding former MP Saleh Ashour and Hassan Naseer, the secretary general of the group. The list also has a strong following among Shiite voters and is tipped to win at least one seat. Other Shiite candidates include former MPs Hassan Jowhar and Hussein Al-Qa
llaf, who are running as independent and have strong chances of maintaining their seats.

On the Sunni side, all five former MPs are seeking re-election. They include Mukhled Al-Azemi who is backed by Islamists and from his Awazem tribe. Hussein Al-Huraiti, a former justice minister, is also banking on support from his Awazem tribe. Others include Abdulwahed Al-Awadhi and Abdullah Al-Roumi, who are backed by the strong support of their respective families.

Former MP Mohammad Al-Kandari is the official candidate of the Islamic Salaf Alliance and is drawing support from his large Kandari family. But he has two other contenders from the same family, Abdullah Al-Kandari and Jassem Al-Kandari, who was a member in the 2006 Assembly.

The Awazem tribe did not hold its tribal primary like last year and thus its votes are expected to be divided. Besides Mukhled and Huraiti, former MP Ahmad Al-Shuhomi, Mubarak Al-Harees and Mohammad Hamad Al-Rasheed are other leading Awazem candidates. Rasheed is also backed by the Islamic Constitutional Movement. Wasmi Khaled Al-Wasmi, the son of former MP Khaled Al-Wasmi, is a liberal candidate also banking on support from the Awazem and liberals.

Among the two women, Maasouma Al-Mubarak is tipped to make history by becoming the first female MP after she made history in 2005 by becoming the first Kuwaiti female minister. Shiites had all their five members from this constituency and are expected to maintain their numbers or even increase it by a sixth seat.

Kuwait: Protesters slam 'infidel' charge

2009-05-11T14:36:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times
Published Date: May 10, 2009
By Hussain Al-Qatari, Staff Writer

KUWAIT: A number of Kuwaitis held a rally in front of the National Assembly yesterday to protest recent accusations by an Islamist candidate. Thawabet Al-Ummah, a religious movement led by fourth constituency candidate Mohammad Hayef Al-Mutairi, issued a statement on Wednesday in which it claimed that what was said by third constituency candidate Dr Aseel Al-Awadhi in a widely-watched YouTube video makes her an "infidel" and that she must "repent and beg for forgiveness.

The YouTube video that appeared on May 5 shows a still picture of Al-Awadhi and edited audio clips previously recorded without permission during one of her classes at Kuwait University where she teaches. In the audio clips, she makes a reference to a verse in the Holy Quran that talks about hijab (the Islamic head cover) and its historical context in accordance with Tafsir Al-Tabari, a commentary and exegesis book on the Holy Quran written by prominent historian and scholar Muhammad Al-Tabari. Many extremi
sts accused her of corruption and immorality, the latest of which was a column in a newspaper calling her "irreligious".

Expressing irritation towards such allegations, first constituency candidate and former minister of health Dr Massouma Mubarak said at the rally yesterday that Kuwaiti women were slandered for asking for their political rights in 2005, and were attacked for running for elections in 2006 and 2008, but it is time for such accusations to stop. "They said that a woman who votes without taking permission of her husband or father is a sinner. This is not acceptable. We have to tell them to stop. Stop implementin
g religion to your own desire. Stop messing up democracy. Stop marginalizing humans for your own gain," she said to the applause of the protestors.

Political activist Ali Khajah objected the random and biased accusations of Al-Awadhi being an infidel, stressing that Kuwait is a democratic country. He said that everyone is entitled to have their opinion, but no one has the right to use religion for their own needs and to make such decisions regarding whether someone is an infidel or a Muslim, or whether they are going to heaven or hell. He warned against such extremist behavior, saying that it can lead to murder. "Kuwait is Kuwait of freedom. Kuwait is
Kuwait of culture, of advancement. Yes, there are dark aspects, but they will go away and Kuwait will come back as it was. Kuwait, my country, may you be safe and glorious!" he said.

A representative of Kuwait's National Democratic Alliance, Anwar Juma, said that the accusations of extremist Islamists must be answered to with the same level of ruthlessness. "They have not one speck of respect for Kuwaitis and nationalism. They attacked harshly with their statements." He elaborated that such religious affiliations have no positive stances to be remembered with, giving examples of how when they were in control of Kuwait University's students union, they simply called the invasion of Ira
q to Kuwait a "disagreement between the two countries." Juma asked "Is this how they describe the barbarian actions by Iraqi soldiers against Kuwait's citizens and residents?

Former MP Meshari Al-Osaimi in his speech predicted the end of extremist Islamic powers in Kuwait in the field of politics. "They only issued this fatwa because their faction is dying. It is dying, and they have noticed that people are leaning more towards nationalism after extremist Islamism failed to take the country anywhere towards advancement." He said that this does not mean Kuwaitis have no respect for religion, drawing the line between Islam as a religion and Islamism as the political employment of
Islam for political interests. "This is not the first time that women participate in the elections. But now that they (extremists) sensed the threat of women on their position, they felt the need to do anything in order to curb voters from supporting female candidates," he said.

Kuwait: Women see hope in upcoming elections

2009-05-11T14:32:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times

Published Date: May 10, 2009
By Hussain Al-Qatari, Staff Writer

KUWAIT: As May 16 draws near, hopes seems to be presiding the views of female voters. Even after the issuance of the recent fatwa forbidding voting for women, the supporters of the female a great majority still sees that change is only possible if women reach the Parliament. Kuwait Times conducted a survey to find out about the various views and reasons behind women's support in female candidates.

The young generation of Kuwaiti women believe that for women to win the elections is a statement that needs to be made. Fay Al-Najjar believes it is a leap towards change and acceptance of development. "Before we think of solutions, we have to locate the roots of the problems that we have. Radical solutions for problems are much needed in our country. We treat the crises we are undergoing, which I can best describe as a gushing wound, with a sorry Band-Aid," she said.

Fay explained what she described as a 'gushing wound,' saying, "There is tension between sects, between tribals and non-tribals and between conservative extremists and liberal extremists. This is not something to readily accept. We need to fix this and promote tolerance, and Kuwait cannot do that if it keeps its women stuck where they are." Aisha Al-Suwaidan thinks the female presence will add more sophistication to previous MPs dialogue. "This will make male representatives rethink their strategies and th
e way they debate," she said, adding jokingly that the presence of women will in any case make things better.

Batool Al-Baloushi, 33-year old, echoed Aisha's sentiment. She said she is going to vote for a woman because she strongly believes that Kuwait desperately needs to have women in its Parliament. This conviction stems from her seeing how dialogue has deteriorated immensely in the National Assembly throughout the previous decade. She mused, "Generally speaking, men don't act all crazy in the presence of women, or when dealing with women. So I believe we will be able to listen to more articulate dialogue rathe
r than screaming and fighting in parliamentary sessions when women make it (in).

Sarah Al-Qallaf believes that more than one woman will make it in this year's elections. She said if she could, she would have an all-women parliament. "Men have proved to us over the years that they are hard- headed and not accepting of other views. This is not something that I have made up; watch their debates in parliament and see with your own eyes," she said.

Sarah, 31, says that the demands of her generation are generally career- related. She said that throughout her eight years of work, she saw male colleagues who have come after her get promotions and increments, while she makes less than them and works harder. "When people see that women are capable of making decisions and representing others in the parliament, I hope that their view of us will change and they will treat us as equals at work," she said. She says that she has seen women be more active and in
volved this year than the previous years.

Even her mother, a woman in her seventies, has been attending different candidates' seminars and debating about the country's politics. Salma Al-Enezi, 56-year- old retired teacher says that she is certain of women's presence in the next parliament, but she is worried that many of the female candidates, especially the ones she called 'educated' would waste time competing with men. She said that she wishes those female candidates will prove to be deserving of the voters' trust. Female future MPs should not
waste their time competing with men, but rather focus on what Kuwaiti women want and need. She said, "Some educated candidates I met in person speak my language, but there are other ones who only blabber with big terms and jargon about economy and financial stimulus plans.

Iran: Roxana Saberi released from prison: Judiciary spokesman

2009-05-11T14:29:00.000-04:00

Mehr News

TEHRAN, May 11 (MNA) – The Judiciary spokesman confirmed on Monday that Iranian-U.S. national Roxana Saberi has been released from jail.
“The appeals court overturned the verdict on Roxana Saberi,” Alireza Jamshidi told the Mehr News Agency.

Saberi, 32, was sentenced to an eight-year prison term last month on espionage charges.

The appeals court reduced her jail term on Monday to a two-year suspended sentence.

PA/PA

END

MNA

Iran: Iran could elect first female president

2009-05-11T14:26:00.000-04:00

presstv.ir

More than 40 women have registered as prospective candidates for Iran's tenth Presidential elections, a top election official says.

"Of the 475 who signed up as candidates, 433 are men and 42 are women," Kamran Daneshjoo, the head of Iran's election committee told reporters on Sunday.

That means the Islamic Republic could see a woman as its head of state, becoming the first Muslim country to have a female president.

However, the four candidates with the highest chance to win the race to the Presidential palace are incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's last prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, two times parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi and the Secretary of Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei.

Hours after registration closed in the country's capital of Tehran, Daneshjoo said the oldest Iranian to seek the presidency was an 86 year-old, while the youngest was a 19-year-old teenager.

"From among the candidates one had obtained a high ranking clerical degree, one was a professor, 35 people had a PhD. and 216 were post graduates," he added.

A former member of Iran's 290-seat parliament, Rafat Bayat is considered the most prominent female figure to register for the elections, scheduled for June 12.

The Sociologist, whose last bid for presidency was rejected four years ago, has announced that if elected, her first deputy will be a woman.

After registering at the Interior Ministry on Saturday, Bayat criticized the Ahmadinejad administration for missing so many 'golden opportunities', a reference to the government's failure to take advantage of skyrocketing oil prices last year.

Under the Islamic Republic constitution, candidates for the presidency be among "rejal", a word meaning 'men' in Arabic but translates into renowned political figures in Persian.

The word has caused controversy in the past, with some interpretations claiming that the constitution bars women from running for president.

However, Iran's constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, declared in April that there is no restriction on women standing in this year's presidential elections.

"The council has never put an interpretation on the word 'rejal'," Abbas-Ali Kadkodaye, a spokesman for the Guardians Council said.

MT/MMN

Iran: Many Try to Run for President in Iran, but Few Will Be Allowed

2009-05-11T14:23:00.000-04:00

By NAZILA FATHI
Published: May 10, 2009
TEHRAN — With Iran’s presidential elections a month away, the Interior Ministry said Sunday that a total of 475 people had registered as candidates, including 40 women, and that the registrants ranged in age from 19 to 86. But an oversight panel of conservative mullahs and jurists is almost certain to disqualify most of them, leaving only a handful.

The total number of candidates, announced at the end of a five-day registration period, was less than half the 1,014 who had registered for the last presidential elections, in June 2005. Of that total, the oversight panel, known as the Guardian Council, disqualified all but six.

The Guardian Council, which screens all candidates for their religious and political qualifications and is known for its conservative Islamist views, is expected to announce the winnowed list of candidates for the June 12 elections on May 22.

There is a widespread expectation that the council will disqualify most or all challengers who favor more political and social openness. But the council’s choices will still be scrutinized because the incumbent candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative widely blamed for Iran’s increased economic isolation, has lost many influential allies.

The most likely challengers are the three who had already declared their intention to face Mr. Ahmadinejad before the registration period. They are Mir Hussein Moussavi, a moderate politician and former prime minister; Mehdi Karroubi, another moderate politician and former speaker of Parliament; and Mohsen Rezai, a former head of the Revolutionary Guards.

The focus of the campaign so far has been Iran’s economy, but the target of the challengers is Mr. Ahmadinejad, whom they have sharply criticized.

The most unusual criticism came last week from Mr. Rezai, who, like Mr. Ahmadinejad, had opposed more political and social openness in the past. He said in a news conference that if Mr. Ahmadinejad was re-elected, “he would drag the country over a cliff.” He called the president’s foreign policy “provocative” and “adventurous” and blamed him later in the week for $1 billion in missing oil revenue.

Mr. Karroubi has criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments on the issue of the Holocaust. Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust, but because of the country’s animosity toward Israel, the subject was dealt with quietly until Mr. Karroubi brought it out in the open. He said that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements had harmed the country and undermined the country’s position on the global stage.

Mr. Moussavi, who could be Mr. Ahmadinejad’s most serious rival, has lashed out at the Guidance Patrol, the police force that was set up under Mr. Ahmadinejad, and was responsible for harassing women deemed to be violating Islamic dress codes.

Politicians and activists are also taking advantage of a more tolerant atmosphere before the elections. Women’s groups have formed a coalition and announced at a news conference last month that they wanted discriminatory laws against women to be amended — a demand that has been confronted harshly by the authorities. Many female activists have been jailed in the past year.

Mr. Ahmadinejad once had the backing of influential clerics, but they have refrained from supporting him publicly in his re-election campaign, casting some doubt on his prospects for a second term.

The supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once his most prominent supporter, scolded him in a public letter last week after Mr. Ahmadinejad announced he was making a close ally the head of the state bureau for pilgrimages to Mecca.

Mr. Ahmadinejad may still be re-elected. He has traveled everywhere around the country as president, giving money and promising to help. Many voters point to his generosity and willingness to ease government bureaucracy.

“I will vote for him because he wrote a letter and exempted us from paying a fine for illegal construction when he was mayor,” said Nader Abolqasemi, a 33-year old civil servant, referring to the time when Mr. Ahmadinejad was the mayor of Tehran before he was elected president.

His supporters portray him as a Spartan and pious man who wants to serve his country. In a book about his life titled “The Son of People,” he still cultivates the small garden at his home and his newly married daughter lives in a small rental apartment.

The candidate registration announcement coincided with news that an imprisoned Iranian-American journalist in Iran, Roxana Saberi, had appealed her conviction for espionage. News services reported that her lawyer was optimistic that the eight-year sentence would be reduced.

The lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, talked to reporters after his client’s five-hour, closed-door appeals hearing. He said that he had been allowed to defend Ms. Saberi and that he expected the court to rule in the coming days.

The case has caused tensions between the United States and Iran at a time when President Obama has said he wants to engage the Iranian government after a 30-year estrangement. Washington has called the spying conviction baseless.

Iran had promised a review of the case on appeal and insisted that Ms. Saberi would be allowed to provide a full defense. Officials have suggested that her prison term could be reduced or the conviction overturned. Ms. Saberi, who grew up in Fargo, N.D., was convicted last month after a closed-door hearing.

Tunisia: Tunisian First Lady says presidency of regional Organization will promote status of Arab women

2009-05-08T15:09:00.000-04:00

Tunisia Online News

Tunis, May 7, 2009- In an interview to the Tunisian monthly opinion magazine “Roua”, Tunisia’s First Lady, Mrs Leila Ben Ali said that Tunisia’s presidency of the Arab Women Organization (AWO) for the next two years “will follow up on the implementation of the Organization’s mechanisms and programs so as to give Arab women larger opportunities and wider prospects for participation.”

Mrs Ben Ali, who will act as the Chairperson of the Organization for the next two years, as part of the Organization’s rotational leadership, vowed to promote the status of Arab women while “enhancing their role in building advanced Arab societies.”

Asked about the privileged status Tunisian women enjoy, Mrs Ben Ali said that “the achievements and gains accomplished by Tunisian women are a source of pride for all Tunisians”.

In Tunisia she added, “we longer speak of women’s liberation but of fully fledged partnership.” Tunisian women represent 30% of the working population and can be found in all professions she said, stressing the fact that women represent 33% of judges, 31% of lawyers, one third of university teachers, a quarter of the country’s journalists, two thirds of pharmacists. Moreover 99% of six year old girls attend school and over 59% are university students.

She also highlighted the fact that Tunisian women are also active in political life as they represent 23% of the Chamber of deputies, 19% of the Chamber of Advisors, 27, 6% in municipal councils, including the presence of 5 women as mayors. 20% of diplomatic positions are also held by women added Mrs Ben Ali, who pointed out that more than 10,000 businesswomen are running their own projects.

Stressing the role of civil society in further empowering women Mrs Ben Ali said that nearly 30 associations concerned with women’s affairs are active in Tunisia.

“The New Era has offered women the conditions propitious for a larger participation in all fields of development. Having accomplished significant gains, unprecedented in our cultural and geographic environment, Tunisian women are now a fundamental element in the building and growth of society”, she said.

The interview also focused on Mrs Ben Ali’s responsibilities in the social and humanitarian sectors, especially in her capacity as the president of the BASMA association for the promotion of employment among disabled people.

The Tunisian First Lady also told “Roua” that the media are called upon to adopt amore constructive role in reflecting the genuine role of women in life. She slammed a certain Arab press and television for giving “stereotyped images of women” which discard women’s political, economic, cultural and scientific roles. She said she was fully convinced that “the most pressing task is to continue to change mentalities and mindsets, as a prelude to changing the image of women in society”, in addition to the “responsibility incumbent upon Arab women themselves to change their own image”, she added.

To a question on the scourge of violence against women that plagues many Arab societies, the Tunisian First Lady stressed the importance “to enact tough and binding laws” to discourage such practises. She also insisted on the importance of the role of educational institutions in setting up programs “free from any ideology that belittles women and their status.”

Mrs Ben Ali noted that the education of children is a noble mission which should be carried out to the best of ones’ abilities, given the fact that the future of children is the future of humanity as a whole. Pointing out to the plight of Palestinian children, Mrs Ben Ali said that as a Chairperson of the Arab Women Organisation, she will set up new approaches and programs to promote the rights of Palestinian children.

Mauritania: Religious Leaders call for Ending Corporal Punishment in Mauritania

2009-05-08T15:02:00.001-04:00

UNICEF
By Christian Skoog and Brahim Ould Isselmou

ATAR, Mauritania, 6 May 2009 – In the first hour after his arrival at a mahadra (Koranic school) in Atar, Ahmed was beaten several times. Over the next four months, he suffered daily.

His ‘Cheikh’, or teacher, used many different tools to punish Ahmed and his friends. Some of the boys who are considered troublemakers were tied up to the trunks of trees and left outside for hours, suffering from the heat and hunger.

“I pray to Allah that I no longer have to wear my torn shirt to cover the scars on my back,” said Ahmed.

Turning to the Imams’ Network

In this country, as in many others, corporal punishment is widespread in mahadras and secular primary schools, and within families. It is considered a suitable and effective educational method.

UNICEF Mauritania analyzed this widespread phenomenon in order to find the best way to address it. Given the pre-eminent position of religious leaders in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a partnership with the Imams’ and Religious Leaders’ Network for Child Rights was deemed an appropriate entry point.

This approach is also in line with the recommendations of the UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children, which urges close collaboration with community and religious leaders.

No basis in the Koran

For its part, the Imams’ Network carried out a study to assess whether corporal punishment is allowed in Islam. The evidence was overwhelming: The study found that violence has no place in the Koran.

UNICEF Representative in Mauritania Christian Skoog, local authorities and the President of the Imams’ and Religious Leaders’ Network for Child Rights, Hademine Ould Saleck, attend a workshop on ending corporal punishment.
The results of the study will now form the basis of a fatwa (religious edict) barring physical and verbal violence against children in the educational system, including in the home.

“The evidence that corporal punishment is forbidden by Islam is clear and abiding for all of us,” declared Imams’ Network President Hademine Ould Saleck. “Let us stop arguing. We don’t have a choice, and we must apply Sharia [Islamic law], which fully protects children”.

‘A powerful tool’

A regional workshop to validate the study was held 20-21 April in Atar. Among the participants were 30 Imams from the Adrar and Inchiri regions, as well as UNICEF Representative in Mauritania Christian Skoog.

“We have to use this fatwa prohibiting corporal punishment as a powerful tool to disseminate and put an end to violence in mahadras, schools and religious events,” said Mr. Skoog.

This child-rights initiative coincides with the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the scaling up of the country programme in Mauritania. In fact, the regional workshop kicked off a series of commemorative events.

Algeria: El Moudjahid Forum on Women

2009-05-08T14:59:00.000-04:00

La Tribune, 5.7.09
A debate yesterday, organized by the daily El Moudjahid, centered on the presence of women in the public sphere. Mrs. Francoise Halimi, Vice President of the Association of Women Heads of Enterprise, noted that the emancipation of women, and an active public life, has permitted them to ameliorate their families’ standard of living.

Saudi Arabia: Saudis Debate Ban on Women Drivers

2009-05-08T14:53:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
By Robert Mackey

Updated | May 8 A young Saudi woman has launched an online campaign using YouTube, Facebook and Flickr to get Saudis to discuss, and possibly reconsider, the ban on women drivers in the Kingdom.

As an article published last month in the English-language Saudi newspaper Arab News explained, the project, called “We the Women,” was started by Areej Khan, a 24-year-old Saudi woman currently studying design in the United States. According to Arab News, she started thinking about how onerous the ban was when she saw that her retired father was forced to spend much of his time “chauffeuring her, her mother and three sisters.”

The core of the campaign is a set of stickers, in the form of speech bubbles and bumper stickers, which Saudi men and women are encouraged to download from Flickr, fill in with their thoughts, and then display. Some people are also taking pictures of what they write on their stickers and then adding those photographs to the project’s Flickr set of “Declarations.”

Printed at the foot of each sticker is the simple message: “To drive, or not to drive, that is the question.”

As the project description on Flickr explains, Ms. Khan wants to hear other voices, not just amplify her own:

We the Women is a campaign that aims to raise the issue of women driving in Saudi Arabia and to start a real, public conversation. The We the Women declaration bubbles and bumper stickers were created as a space for self expression. Feel free to fill it out with your opinion on the issue and stick it wherever you feel it needs to be.

An image posted on the We the Women “Declarations” set on Flickr.
The images of the speech bubbles posted on Flickr so far have already sparked debate. Here is part of an exchange Ms. Khan had in the comments thread beneath a speech bubble that said, simply, “I don’t like the backseat!” with two other Flickr users, calling themselves Mac Moo and Mr. Nice 2009 (web punctuation intact):

Mac Moo says:

lol….my dear….u are goood at writing,,,but its for your own safety… women must not left alone…in islam…and thats for good of both man and women…. you know how exactly west world is…..i think the government is doing it rite.

N7nu - We the Women says:

just to clarify…This is a user submission. I did not write this. Secondly, do you think that if women were allowed to drive we would be westernized as a society? How come women in the time of the prophet were allowed to ride camels. Isn’t that the same thing?

Mr. Nice 2009 says:

how pleasure it’s to be drived. the roads in the kingdom need fast driving and braveness. if u got some1 to do for u the driving, u should be proud of. i am against that if woman drive there is alot of dangers, but my confidence in saudi women is high. not driving does not mean u r denied right, but means u r well cared of. Thank ur creator for that.

Other speech bubbles posted on Flickr include: “God did not say I can’t drive” and “I saved 1500 SR by driving myself around Saudi.”

In addition to the back and forth on Flickr, the campaign’s Facebook page has 1,100 fans, who are engaged in an active debate of whether the ban should be lifted, and comments have appeared on the promotional video for the campaign posted on YouTube (the version embedded above is in English, other are in Arabic). The video was shot in Oregon, but Ms. Khan told Arab News “I had to make look like it was in Saudi.”

According to Arab News, there is apparently wide support in Saudi Arabia for ending the ban: “Although there are no specific statistics on the number of people who are for or against women driving, most women believe it is their God-given right to drive.”

Kuwait: Controversy over voting for women gets heated

2009-05-08T14:50:00.000-04:00

The National
James Calderwood, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: May 07. 2009 10:59PM UAE / May 7. 2009 6:59PM GMT KUWAIT CITY // Waleed al Tabtabai, who served in Kuwait’s last parliament, stoked controversy this week when he agreed with a member of the Salafi Movement in saying it would be a sin to vote for women in the elections on May 16.

Mr al Tabtabai, who said he is an independent Salafi, was speaking on the sidelines of an election rally on Tuesday.

Fuhaid al Hailam of the Salafi Movement (SM) had started the row on Monday when he said it would be a sin to vote for one of the country’s 19 female candidates, Al Arabiya reported. Salafism is an austere branch of Islam that rejects innovation and believes in a strict, literal reading of the Quran.

“In Islam, the heads of the state should only be men, and we think the parliament is part of the head of the state,” Mr al Tabtabai said. “Other things are OK for women but not to be a part of the parliament.

“It’s an old fatwa,” he said referring to Mr al Hailam’s remarks. “Some of the public are not aware of it, but it was issued 20 or 30 years ago by the ministry of awqaf [Islamic Affairs].

Mr al Tabtabai is likely to regain his seat – polls suggest he will finish in the top 10 in his constituency, earning him a place in the 50-member parliament.

The women who are trying to reach parliament for the first time lambasted the statements.

Naeema al Hai, a Third Constituency candidate, said yesterday: “Those guys say it’s OK for them to take the vote of a woman, but not OK for women to vote for each other. That’s very wrong. That’s not the freedom and democracy that the Quran gave us.”

Ms al Hai said some men are frightened of the idea of sharing power with a woman in parliament.

Kuwait’s mainstream Salafi party, the Islamic Salafi Alliance (ISA), was the largest political group in the last parliament with four seats. Kuwait’s MPs are mostly independent or belong to small political groups. This year they are fielding five candidates. The SM has no presence in the forthcoming election.

The emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, dissolved the last assembly and called for new elections in May when some MPs tried to question the prime minister, Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al Ahmad Al Sabah, who is a royal.

Mr al Tabtabai was involved in the previous political crisis in November as it was his request to question the prime minister that led to the resignation of the cabinet.

Two of the ISA’s candidates, Khalid Sultan bin Essa and Abdullatif al Ameeri, did address an exclusively female audience at a rally on Tuesday. The women passed questions to the former MPs on cards, but did not ask about the fatwa.

Instead, they focused Mr bin Essa’s involvement with supermarkets that sold pork and alcohol overseas. Mr bin Essa said he did not establish the companies, he bought into them, and they have now withdrawn the products.

Mr al Ameeri distanced his party from Mr al Hailam of the SM but did not take sides on the fatwa. “The Salafi Movement is different from us,” Mr al Ameeri said.

“For example, the alliance considers bin Laden as a criminal. They consider him a hero.
“We don’t know what the origin of the fatwa is,” he said. “This is not right. We have to find the correct origin in the Quran and Sunnah.”

Mr bin Essa clarified his party’s position in an interview yesterday. He said voting for women was not a sin. “We separated ourselves from the fatwa. We issued a statement that undermines theirs.”

But some of the women at the rally agreed with the fatwa. Waheeda Abdulwahab, a sister of Mr al Ameeri, said she supportsedit because nobody in her religion would issue a fatwa that was untrue, as doing so would be a serious sin.

Another woman at the event, Sheikha al Fahad, who is involved in running the ISA’s campaign, said: “I don’t agree with the fatwa 100 per cent, maybe 30 per cent. I know what they mean when they say it’s a sin. It’s too soon for Kuwaiti women to enter the parliament – maybe in a few years.”

At another campaign rally this week, a former MP and candidate for the ISA, Ali al Omair, said his religion did not permit women to serve in the assembly but “if a lady is either elected or nominated by the government, we have to deal with her.
“We can’t isolate ourselves because there is a woman in the parliament”.

This will be the third attempt by women to reach the National Assembly since they received full political rights in 2005. The polls predict three women will win seats in the next parliament.

Morocco: In Morccco, breaking down barriers in the Arab world

2009-05-07T15:24:00.000-04:00

boston.com Passport
By Fatema Haji-Taki

May 5, 2009

IFRANE, Morocco -- For the past five days, a group of Moroccan students and young-adult activists from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Tunisia and Algeria have been working intensely together in workshops building bridges among themselves and improving skills for creating interfaith community programs in their own countries.

From working to ease interfaith tensions in Egypt and Yemen to advancing women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, these activists are dedicated to sharing their expertise and acquiring new skills on how to effectively plan events, launch campaigns, and secure funding for their field work to promote religious and political freedom in their countries. The workshops emphasize how to translate their online activism to real-world organizing and leadership skills that participants can put to work in practical ways in their home communities.

Ironically, some participants were unable to attend because their visa applications were not approved in time, or, in the case of a prominent Baha’i activist from Egypt, it became too dangerous for her to travel. The empty seats were a stark reminder of the lack of religious and political freedom in most Arab countries.

Jesse Sage, Nasser Weddady and Lauren Murphy from Hands Across the Middle East Support Alliance, a Boston-based nonprofit, and I organized and are facilitating the conference, “Interfaith Leadership Seminar: From the Virtual to the Real World,” at Al Akhawayn University, an English-language college in Ifrane.

Jewish in the Arab world

During the conference the participants met Moroccan Raphael Elmaleh, believed to be the only Jewish tour guide in the Arab world. He is also a founder of the only Jewish museum in the Arab world in Casablanca. Elmaleh’s passion in life is to research the Jewish heritage of Morocco and restore the synagogues and other sites that were left behind by the Jews more than 40 years ago.

“I’m proud to be a Jew in an Arab country,” he says. On Sunday, all the participants had a chance to visit Fez while he showed us the old Jewish Quarter and the cemeteries and the synagogues left behind. For many, this was the first time they had been exposed to the Jewish heritage in an Arab country. By the end of the day, the bond that he created with the rest of the group was heartening.

At first, he acknowledged he was nervous talking about his work to a group of Arab young people from across the Middle East whom he had never met before. But working with the group for two days has changed his mind and he is excited to talk about how Jews and Muslims coexisted peacefully in Morocco and what that means for the future. During dinner yesterday, all of the participants gave him a standing ovation for his dedication while the Moroccan students sang the national anthem. The expression on Elmaleh’s face was invaluable.

Freedom of the press in Yemen

Unfortunately, on Monday, we also learned that an independent newspaper run by one of the Yemeni participants, Abdullah Abdulwahab Naji Qaid, was shut down by Yemeni authorities. Abdullah is a founding member and the General Activity Supervisor of the al-Tagheer Organization for Rights and Freedom Defense, an NGO based in Yemen. He has previously participated in seminars on religious freedom which addressed discrimination against Yemen's Zaidi community.

(Fatema Haji-Taki/UUSC photo)

Yemeni journalist Abdullah Abdulwahab Naji Qaid

When the news broke, the mood among all of us turned solemn. It was a grave reminder of the difficult circumstances these activists work in and the challenges ahead of them after they return home. As the night wore on, the solidarity between all of us for Qaid’s work was palpable. Many are working to organize a campaign for him while others are planning to spread the word through Facebook, their blogs and other online networks.

As a non-Arab Muslim-American human rights activist, I am humbled by the work of my peers. Through the last few days, I’ve seen them work together, debate their differences, sing and dance together. They have created a support network for each other. They are all invested in each others’ success because they all are committed to religious and political freedom in the Arab world.

What they have experienced together as a team will stay with them for the rest of their lives. As they go back, they will face obstacles and there will be times when they will want to give up. My only hope is they will remember the solidarity they experienced this past week and keep soldiering on because they are the future leaders of the Arab world.

Yemen: Yemen escapes Worst of the Worst list of not free countries

2009-05-07T15:19:00.000-04:00

Yemen Times
By: Nadia Al-Sakkaf and Freedom House

May 6 — Maintaining the same position as last year in the Freedom House annual survey on the state of global political rights and civil liberties, Yemen has escaped the list of 42 countries designated as “not free.”

Each year 193 countries are judged based on events from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. As last year Yemen is described as “partially free” with a rating of five for both political rights and civil liberties rates, and an average combined rating of five based on a 1 to 7 scale, with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free.

“We are publishing this report to assist policymakers, human rights organizations, democracy advocates, and others who are working to advance freedom around the world. We also hope that the report will be useful to the work of the United Nations Human Rights Council,” announced the team behind the report.

Of the 51 “not free” territories and countries, 17 countries and four territories were selected as Worst of the Worst due to systematic and pervasive human rights violations. With an average combined political rights and civil liberties ratings of 6.5 or 7, these countries comprise 10 percent of the world’s nations and 24 percent of the world’s population. Six of those 17 countries are Arab: Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

None of the Arab countries were categorized as free, while only seven countries including Yemen were defined as partially free: Djibouti, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain, Morocco and Kuwait. The remaining 13 countries in addition to the Palestinian territories were defined as not free.

According to the report, at the beginning of 2009, of the 193 countries in the world, 89 countries -46 percent- are free and can be said to respect a broad array of basic human rights and political freedoms. An additional 62 countries -32 percent- are partly free, with some abridgments of basic rights and weak enforcement of the rule of law.

In all, some 3 billion people -46 percent of the world’s population-live in free states in which a broad array of political rights are protected.

“The fundamental violations of rights presented in this report are all the more alarming because they stand in sharp contrast to the significant expansion of human liberty over the last three decades. In that period, dozens of states have shed tyranny and embraced democratic rule and respect for basic civil liberties,” said Jennifer Windsor, executive director at Freedom House.

The survey rates each country and territory on a seven-point scale for both political rights and civil liberties, with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free, and then assigns each country and territory a broad category status of free (for countries whose ratings average 1.0 to 2.5), partly free (3.0 to 5.0), or not free (5.5 to 7.0).

The ratings process is based on a checklist of 10 political rights and 15 civil liberties questions. The political rights check list includes questions about the electoral process, political pluralism and participation, functioning of the government and other discretionary political rights questions. The civil liberties checklist includes questions about freedom of expression and belief, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and personal autonomy and individual rights.

“The Freedom in the World ratings are not merely assessments of the conduct of governments, but are intended to reflect the reality of daily life,” reads the report. “Freedom can be affected by state actions as well as by non-state actors. Thus, terrorist movements or armed groups use violent methods which can dramatically restrict essential freedoms within a society. Conversely, the existence of non-state activists or journalists who act courageously and independently despite state restrictions can positively impact the ability of the population to exercise its freedoms.”

Consequently, Freedom House and UN Watch strongly urge United Nations members to block seven countries from obtaining seats on the Human Rights Council, including China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia rated among the world’s most repressive regimes.

The non government organizations released a report in New York this week that indicates that nearly two-thirds of the 20 countries running for seats in next week’s election either have poor or questionable human rights records.

The study found seven countries not qualified: Azerbaijan, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Russia and Saudi Arabia. The governments of three of those countries—China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia—rank among the world’s most repressive regimes, suppressing nearly all fundamental political rights and civil liberties, according to Freedom House’s Worst of the Worst report. An additional six countries have questionable or mixed human rights records: Bangladesh, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Senegal.

The report raised further concern that a majority of the candidates may gain seats on the influential council despite their records, because of a lack of competition from democratic states. However, each candidate must first secure an absolute majority of the General Assembly, or 97 votes, to win a seat.

“General Assembly members who care about human rights must not resign themselves to approving these noncompetitive slates,” said Paula Schriefer, Freedom House advocacy director. “We urge member states to restore credibility to the council by rejecting those nations that do not uphold basic standards for human rights.”

On May 12, the UN General Assembly is expected to elect 18 new countries to the Human Rights Council, more than a third of its total membership. Each regional group is apportioned a specific number of seats. However, in three of the five regional groups—Asia, Latin America and the Western European and Others group—the number of countries running does not exceed the number of open seats.

The General Assembly is instructed to elect council members based on their ability to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” and their ability to “fully cooperate” with the council.

As a result, UN Watch and Freedom House evaluated each of the 20 candidates based on its record of human rights protection at home and its record of human rights promotion at the UN.

The evaluation included the countries’ rankings in Freedom House and UN Watch analyses, as well as reports from Reporters San Frontières, The Economist Democracy Index and the Democracy Coalition Project.

Saudi Arabia: Municipal councils ‘not ready to employ women’

2009-05-07T15:15:00.000-04:00

Saudi Gazette
JEDDAH – The time is not ripe for municipal councils to employ women, a city council official here said.
Hassan Al-Zahrani, vice chairman of the municipal council here said that the councils are still in their inception stage and need time before involving females in their work.
Overly hasty moves to open the door to women’s participation could have negative consequences, he said.
The issue of men and women sharing responsibilities is not up for debate, Al-Zahrani said, as each one has their responsibilities specified in Shariah Law.
He said women were taking part in extensive areas of society that are suited to their nature, citing social issues and district centers and other societies.
More women working in those areas would have a positive effect on the structure and cohesion of society, Al-Zahrani added. – Okaz/SG

Kuwait: Kuwaiti women aim for third time lucky in Assembly polls

2009-05-07T15:13:00.000-04:00

Arab Times
KUWAIT CITY, May 6, (AFP): Women in Kuwait aim to make it third time lucky as they contest seats in parliament after two failed attempts in legislative elections. US-educated candidate Maasouma Al-Mubarak already made history by becoming the first female minister in Kuwait in 2005, right after women were granted full political rights following a 40-year struggle. “I am very optimistic that a Kuwaiti woman will reach parliament this time. I was the first female minister and I am looking to become the first female member of parliament,” she said after registering her candidacy. Early polls have been called for May 16, after parliament was dissolved for the third time in as many years. “This time we are contesting for a third time more determined, more optimistic and more aware ... I believe the path is ready,” for women to enter parliament, Mubarak added. “Third time lucky,” the US-educated candidate told AFP.

Women voters make up 54 percent of the 385,000 eligible voters in Kuwait, but they overwhelmingly voted for male candidates in the previous elections since 2005.
Activist Badriya Al-Awadhi found in a study published this week that only three percent of women voters cast their votes for women candidates in the 2008 polls.
In the 2006 and 2008 elections, a total of 54 women candidates stood in the polls but without success although a number of them made a strong showing.
A liberal candidate, Aseel Al-Awadhi, who is running again in this month’s election, came in 11th place last year, just behind the first 10 in her constituency who won seats. Nineteen women are standing in this year’s election, of whom all but two have contested previous elections.
Analysts attribute women’s failure in the previous two elections to several reasons, such as the conservative nature of Kuwait society, absence of support from political groups, and lack of experience.
The head of the Women’s Development Institute, Kawthar Al-Juaan, believes the chances of women on May 16 have improved after they gained experience in the previous two polls.

Chances
“I believe the chances of Kuwaiti women candidates this time are very strong ... Kuwaiti voters are more favourable to women than before,” Juaan told AFP.
She said the constant political crises in the the country and infighting within men-controlled political groups would make it easier for women to win seats.
The date of the elections falls on the fourth anniversary of a parliamentary vote on May 16, 2005 that gave women full political rights.
Candidate Thekra Al-Rasheedi, who last year suprisingly secured 2,200 votes in a tribal constituency where voters do not favour women, said this year the outlook is much better.

“Last year, I struggled to visit diwaniyas (traditionally all-male gathering places) simply because I am a woman. This year, I have been invited by so many diwaniyas that I don’t have the time to visit them all,” lawyer Rasheedi said.
A local hardline Islamic group, however, has issued a fatwa, or a religious edict, saying that voting for women candidates was prohibited under Islam.
The Salafi Movement argued that by becoming members of parliament, women would occupy a public office, something “which, under Islamic rules, is prohibited for women.”
Several female candidates, many of whom are highly educated and work in top professions, slammed the fatwa as “politically-motivated.”
Kuwaiti women account for 44.5 percent of the national workforce of about 336,000 — the highest proportion in any Arab state in the Gulf region — but only a few hold top posts in government.
The 16-member cabinet has two women ministers.

Kuwait: Barrak blasts govt, stimulus

2009-05-06T15:49:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times
Published Date: May 06, 2009
By B Izzak, Staff Writer

KUWIAT: Former opposition lawmaker Musallam Al-Barrak launched a scathing attack on the government and its supporters and strongly criticized the economic stimulus decree, which he said was issued to aid highly influential rich people. Barrak claimed that the bill will provide hundreds of millions of dinars in public funds to private companies, adding that the bill was tailored to serve the interests of a number of companies battered by the global financial crisis.

Meanwhile, leading female candidate Aseel Al-Awadhi yesterday filed a lawsuit with the public prosecutor over a YouTube video showing her telling her university students that Islam does not require women to wear the hijab. The lawsuit named no one but described the clip as an attempt to distort her ideas. Awadhi had earlier explained in a statement that the Youtube clip was illegally filmed while she was giving university students a class and was actively involved in a debate with them over certain issues.

She said the film was completely taken out of context and showed as if she had said that hijab was not required for Muslim women, "which is completely untrue as I was only initiating a debate among the students and not expressing my personal views". Awadhi, holder of a doctorate degree in political philosophy from Texas University in Austin, said that she was only raising controversial questions to her students in a bid to urge them to debate a particular issue.

The posting of the film on YouTube appears to be intended to harm Awadhi's chances of winning the first seat for Kuwaiti women in the Assembly. In her first bid last year, Awadhi came in 11th position, just behind the first 10 winners in the third electoral district.

In another development, Kuwait University administration yesterday scrapped its decision to ban political symposia at the university campus. The decision came after a meeting with the Kuwait Students Union and following strong criticism by political groups and candidates. Meanwhile, the number of candidates still in the fray for the May 16 general elections dropped to 248 including 19 women after a total of 40 candidates have so far pulled out. Withdrawals remain open until Friday and more candidates are e
xpected to drop out.

Barrak, spokesman of the Popular Action Bloc, blamed the government of obstructing development in the country along with a number of former MPs who have been beating the drums for the government. He revealed that he has a "black file" that he will reveal to the Kuwaiti people, regardless of the consequences.

Barrak defended himself against accusations that he always shouts in the Assembly. "I shout because of the pain and if they call me the shouting member, they are the rubber-stamp MPs," he said. He accused the government of lying to the people and forging facts while using "corrupt media and drum-beating MPs to cover up for the whales who have exploited the property of the Kuwaiti people".

Barrak alleged that some influential people have managed to "convince some members of the ruling family that the constitution is a stumbling block before their ambitions." "These influential people are assuring members of the ruling family that they are capable of confronting the people through a security clampdown if the National Assembly is suspended," he said.

He revealed that the Green Island, which is worth KD 2 billion, was about to be given to two investors for an annual rent of just KD 300,000. The Popular Bloc foiled the project, he said. Barrak also criticized the Central Bank for its role on the economic stimulus package and refusal to write off people debts. He ridiculed those who claim that the Kuwaiti economy would collapse if the stimulus law was rejected by the new Assembly, saying that the debt of only seven companies is KD 3.2 billion.

Speaking at the rally, former MP Marzouk Al-Hubaini warned against wide-ranging vote-buying practices which he described as the most serious threat in the elections. Hubaini said that the assault on him and other opposition MPs by calling them "members who instigate crises" is because "we have stopped three main suspicious projects saving more than $25 billion of public funds." He was referring to the K-Dow joint venture, the fourth refinery and electricity contracts.

Iran: Rezaei taps Imam's granddaughter as advisor

2009-05-06T15:45:00.000-04:00

Presstv.ir

Iranian presidential hopeful Mohsen Rezaei has selected one of the granddaughters of the late Imam Khomeini as his campaign advisor on women's issues.

Leili Boroujerdi, a child of the Imam's eldest daughter Zahra Mostafavi, was appointed on Tuesday as Rezaei's advisor on women's issues, a statement issued by the hopeful's camp revealed Tuesday.

"With regards to your outstanding experience, I wish to use your guidance on issues pertinent to women," reads the statement.

Law graduate Leili Boroujerdi is currently the head of the Expediency Council's special committee on youth and women.

Rezaei, a Principlist critic of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies, has previously indicated that if elected, he would appoint a female to fill in the critical post of foreign minister.

“I will appoint a woman as my foreign minister to challenge [US Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton,” he told reporters on Monday.

After months of leaving his bid for presidency in a haze of ambiguity, Secretary of Iran's Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaie on Wednesday announced his bid for the presidency.

Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also feeling the heat, as his main rival, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and the country's ex-parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi have declared they are willing to face Ahmadinejad head-on.

Iran's presidential elections are scheduled to take place on June 12. It will be the tenth presidential vote to take place since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 ended the reign of the pro-US monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

MT/AA

Morocco: Child Marriage in Morocco Criticized

2009-05-06T15:39:00.000-04:00

Magharebia
By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat – 05/05/09

[Getty Images] Extreme poverty leads families to marry off their underage daughters, experts in Morocco say.

Moroccan associations and human rights organisations want the practice of child marriage to stop. Campaigners from various associations recently criticised the way the Moudawana (Family Code), which was intended to limit child marriages, has been applied.

The legal minimum age for marriage in Morocco is 18 years, although family judges are empowered to allow exceptions. This loophole has enabled thousands of families to marry off their daughters prematurely.

According to figures from the justice ministry, over 31,000 under-age girls were married in 2008, compared with 29,847 in 2007.

Fouzia Assouli, chair of the Democratic League of Women's Rights, stressed that reform of the family code must take place now to restrict and clearly define the judges' powers regarding child marriage.

"Five years after the new family code was passed, Moroccans have certainly grasped the great importance of women's rights, but we're still lagging behind society's expectations," she said.

Samira Boufaracha, who belongs to the association Together for Women's Development, stated that the basis upon which exemptions are granted by judges is often unclear. "Almost every request is granted, which just encourages families to continue this practice, even though when the Moudawana first came in, we thought things would change."

The Moroccan Women's Democratic Association's legal chair Saïda Amrani Idrissi said that the law gives judges tremendous room for manoeuvre.

The justice minister says that judges are not automatically granting permission for child marriages, citing the 7% of requests that are rejected.

"The fact that some requests are rejected proves that approval is not a foregone conclusion. Requests are granted according to the particular social situation of the girls concerned," stated Justice Minister Abdelwahed Radi.

Jamal Badaoui, a sociologist, explained to Magharebia that it is proving difficult to change Moroccan attitudes overnight, particularly in rural areas. "Mindsets are much harder to change than laws. Parents living in the midst of poverty and illiteracy continue to believe that girls must be married off as soon as possible. They can't imagine a future outside marriage."

He added that things would not change unless there are targeted public awareness campaigns to explain the harm caused by early marriage and to stress the importance of learning in girls' lives, both in urban and country areas. "An improvement in families' economic circumstances will also help to limit the phenomenon. In fact, there is a series of causes on which the authorities and civil society must take action to change the situation."

Iran: Ebtekar withdraws candidacy in favor of Mousavi

2009-05-06T15:37:00.000-04:00

Mehr News
TEHRAN, May. 6 (MNA) – Former Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar has released a statement announcing her withdrawal from the presidential candidacy in favor of Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Ebtekar said she was “qualified” for the presidential post and that she was sure that her qualification would have been “approved” by the Guardian Council. She added that she believed that the contest of the election by women was “another political and social achievement for the nation”.

However the former director of the Environment Department at the Khatami administration said she made such a decision because unanimity in the reformist camp is of utmost importance.

Ebtekar also praised Mahdi Karroubi’s “brave” stances in the election campaigns but insisted that Mousavi is the “most qualified” candidate.

HK/PA
END
MNA

Iran: Four women among dozens eye Iran presidency

2009-05-06T15:33:00.000-04:00

Middle East Online

Fifty people sign up to stand in Iranian presidential election, awaiting final approval.

TEHRAN - Dozens of hopefuls, including four women and a truck driver, signed up on Tuesday to run in June 12 presidential election, seen as a test for Iran's dominant conservatives.

Fifty people signed up to stand in the election on the first day of a five-day candidate registration period, Kamran Daneshjoo, the election committee head, told reporters.

A mix of citizens with no political background registered on Tuesday, including the truck driver, while others used the opportunity to make a political statement.

"Those who registered were managing directors, experts, retired government employees, teachers, professionals such as from the field of dentistry, and a truck driver," Daneshjoo said.

Most of them were from the cities of Tehran, Mashhad and Tabriz.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took power in August 2005, has yet to declare his candidacy but is expected to register to seek another four-year term before the deadline expires on Saturday.

Former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, ex-parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai, the former head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards Corp, have already announced they plan to stand.

Ahmadinejad has faced mounting criticism from reformists and fellow conservatives mainly over his handling of the economy, accused of stoking inflation and "wasting" Iran's windfall oil revenues over the past two years.

Since his 2005 election, the president has gone on a spending spree, pledging generous sums for local projects and small business loans.

The official IRNA news agency said the first candidate to register was 45-year-old Mohsen Hadi Najafbadi from the province of Sistan Baluchestan which borders Pakistan.

The candidates have to be at least 18 years old but the upper age limit has not been specified. More than 46 million Iranians are eligible to take part in the election, with the voting age also fixed at 18.

In 2005, over 1,000 people registered as candidates but the Guardians Council -- Iran's hardline electoral and constitutional watchdog -- only allowed eight to stand.

The council said that there was no restriction on women standing.

Dressed in a tight velvet coat and bright headscarf, 37-year-old Halina Saki was among the women who registered on Tuesday.

"I want to prove women can come forward and speak out on social issues," Saki, who holds a PhD in psychology, said. "I don't think I'll pass the screening but whoever is elected should appoint women to the cabinet."

After the registration, the powerful 12-member Guardians Council will screen the candidates and give a final ruling on those who can actually stand for the election.

The council comprises six clerics selected by the supreme leader and six jurists proposed by the judiciary chief.

The names of successful candidates will be announced on May 20 and 21, with the election campaign running to June 10. The interior ministry has said results will be declared a day after the election.

Kuwait: Candidates react to Salafist 'fatwa'

2009-05-05T16:02:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times
KUWAIT: Reacting to the fatwa issued by Islamic Salafists Movement asking voters to abstain from voting for female candidates, Dr Fatima Al-Abdaly, a first constituency candidate described it is a 'dangerous indicator.' "This is a clear violation of the Constitution and electoral law," she asserted, adding that it reflects the fact that women now stand at the Parliament's threshold. This knowledge has prompted these individuals to take steps to discourage their foray into politics." She said that other Muslim countries do view women's electoral franchise as a problem, "The statement takes us back to the era before women gained their political rights." She questioned why the fatwa was not declared during the 2006 and 2008 elections.

She said that they (Salafists) are trying to target women during the elections, since many voters had planned to vote for women. But this(edict ) may hurt women's interests since voting for them is being condemned as a sin. Third constituency candidate Ayesha Al-Rushaid said that since the Salafists movement has exposed its real nature to the Kuwaiti people, they are now playing the religious card. Islam does not forbid political participation which is evidenced by the 'Baiah' system in Islam where men and women are considered equal.

Another third constituency candidate Naeema Al-Hai said that such fatwas now aim at preventing women from reaching the Parliament and reduce their chances. This indicates how weak those political factions are at the possibility of women wining seats in the Parliament. She said that women's participation in Parliament does not mean 'general jurisdiction,' rather it is participation decision-making and there are examples of women holding leadership positions in Muslim countries. Meanwhile a official said that the government will not comment on inflammatory statements. He said that the appearance of such issues now aim at gaining certain groups' votes. Kuwait's Constitution has guaranteed equality to both man and woman.

Dr Faris Al Wuqayan, a researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies criticized the Salafists Movement's statement, adding that it does not relate to the 'civil state' and democracy at all, and questioned, "Is it okay to benefit from the woman's vote as a voter without granting her our vote as a candidate"? He said such statements take us back to the Middle Ages of Europe because it is not related to the modern era at all, in fact 'the brains that came up with it need treatment.' When asked about the possibility of the so-called edict gaining support among masses, Al-Wquayan said that the voting standards are not determined by religious practices. This is because clergy men's illegal practices and participation in the country's administration, economy, financial companies' administration are well known.

This gives out the idea that ideological religious affiliations are not related to ethical practices, even it stems from a liberal or tribal person. Columnist and political analyst Sami Al-Nisf found it strange for a few to convene and call themselves a movement and then start issuing statements. He said that the Salafists movement that is represented in Kuwait, is the revival of society and that they did not hear such statements from them. Al-Nisf said that Islam is not limited to Kuwait, but it is practiced in 56 countries around the world. He added that many gave women the right to run for office and vote and women are allowed to hold the office of prime minister there.

Iran: More Than 100 Iranian Activists Detained In Tehran

2009-05-05T15:51:00.000-04:00

Radio Liberty
More than 100 Iranian labor activists and several members of the One Million Signatures Campaign against discriminatory laws were detained in Tehran on May 1 as they gathered in the city's Laleh Park to mark International Workers' Day.

Witnesses told RFE/RL that police violently attacked activists and workers who had gathered at the park and detained them even before they had started protesting.

Among the detainees is women’s rights activist Jelveh Javaheri, whose husband, Kaveh Mozafari, was also detained at Laleh Park.

Javaheri was detained at the couple's home. Security forces searched the house, confiscated personal files and computers, and took Javaheri with them.

According to Javaheri’s mother, authorities have set a high bail for her release. She said her daughter has not been able to make the payment.

The daughter of another activist, Maryam Mohseni, who was also detained at Laleh Park, said that her mother is being held at Tehran’s Evin prison. She said her mother has been fighting for May Day celebrations to be allowed in Iran for the past 20 years.

Charges against the detainees are not clear.

The families have called on authorities to release their loved ones without any conditions.

(by Golnaz Esfandiari)

Bahrain: Women pledge TV rights push

2009-05-05T14:44:00.000-04:00

Gulf Daily News
By ANITA THOMAS, Posted on » Monday, May 04, 2009

A SERIES of public service announcements by women's groups could soon be aired on national television.

It follows a three-week workshop in which they were taught how to use computer technology to write, film and edit video messages.

The scheme was organised by the New York-based Barefoot Workshop, along with the Bahrain-based Smart Coaching and Research Centre.

Representatives of seven Bahraini women's organisations have written, directed and filmed a series of 30-second public service announcements, which were first screened last night at the Gulf Hotel.

The announcements aim to raise awareness of women's issues such as access to technology, participation in next year's national elections, domestic abuse, illiteracy and youth development.

Organisers hope they will also be broadcast on national television, posted on the Internet and even distributed to mobile phones.

Awareness

"We hope to support societies in Bahrain, particularly women's societies, to raise awareness about various issues faced by them," said programme director Alison Fast.

"We hope that this will be the first of a series of movements that will create awareness about the issues present within the society.

"Each women's society we have worked with has its own agenda for moving forward and has been equipped to spread public service announcements through the channels they choose and to the audience that they are aimed at."

The societies hope their messages will reach wider audience as possible thanks to advanced technology.

"We are hoping to be able to air the announcements on television where the majority of people can have access to them," said Ms Fast.

"Even illiterate people will be able to view them because nearly everyone watches television these days.

"Also sending them to people as messages on their mobile phones and posting them on the Net will definitely help reach more people."

Participating organisations included the Bahrain Young Ladies Association, Bahraini Society for Women's Development, Bahrain Women's Association - Human Development, Al Reef Young Lady Society, Hamad Town Women's Society, Awal Women's Society, Smart Coaching and Research Centre and the Batelco Care Centre for Family Violence Cases.

Saudi Arabia: Businesswomen want male agent out

2009-05-05T14:40:00.000-04:00

Hassna’a Mokhtar | Arab News

JEDDAH: The Ministry of Commerce and Industry confirmed yesterday that some of the ministry’s regional departments were violating a ministerial decree issued in April 2004. The decree states that Saudi women can set up businesses without needing a male agent. Nonetheless, businesswomen have reported that the decree was only implemented in a few locations in the country. The male legal agent is required to conduct affairs with various government organizations. He is granted full powers in company matters and acts with a power of attorney.

“The requirement for a legal agent is an obstacle for many businesswomen,” said Alia Banaja, chairwoman of the Jeddah-based IT company 2 The Point. “I closed down my local operations last week after demanding the removal of this requirement.” According to the decree, a Saudi woman can own and manage her business if her work employs and caters only to women. When, on the other hand, the business is aimed at both men and women, she can own the establishment but has to hire a Saudi man to manage the business.

In March, Banaja started a campaign with a group of businesswomen from the Eastern and Central regions calling for the implementation of the 2004 ministerial decision everywhere in the Kingdom (www.saudibwc.com). The next step was to close down their businesses if their demands for the removal of this requirement were not met. And finally, if closing businesses did not produce positive results from the authorities, they would appeal directly to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. They wanted to have the requirement for a male Saudi general manager canceled, even in the case of a woman’s owning a business that deals with both sexes.

Banaja and other businesswomen spoke to Hassan Aqeel, undersecretary at the Ministry of Commerce and Trade at the end of April. He restated the requirement for a male Saudi manager. “A businesswoman doesn’t need a male legal agent when she manages the work herself in an all-women establishment,” said Aqeel on April 26 to Al-Madina newspaper. “If her business employs or deals with men, then she has to hire a male to manage the affairs of these men.”

Contacted for further comments, Aqeel confirmed the newspaper report.

Nashwa Taher, board member at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told Arab News that the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center for businesswomen had printed a small leaflet to educate women on how to limit the authority given to a male manager. “The leaflet has guidelines businesswomen must use when hiring a manager for the business. It clearly defines what authority he is given,” said Taher.

She added that the center was now studying the reasons why a manager had to be hired. “We require more openness for businesswomen. Therefore, we want to update and change old procedures,” said Taher.

Lawyer Tariq Al-Ibrahim, who advised the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center on the legal aspects of the leaflet, said it was the women’s responsibility in the end to limit the male manager’s power. “All it needs is a contract between the businesswoman and the manager specifying the duties and the extent of his control and responsibilities,” he said, adding: “The owner also needs to oversee all the papers and legal contracts that pass through the manager’s hands in order to exercise total control and avoid any future problems.”

Saudi Arabia: Shoura may seek online restrictions

2009-05-05T14:35:00.000-04:00

Saudi Gazette
By Su’ad Al-Salim and Faris Al-Qahtani
RIYADH – As Saudi Arabia steps up investigation and legal action against those who commit slander online, the Shoura Council is pushing for discussion on whether curbs need to be put on the electronic media, officials said.
The Ministry of Interior on Monday referred a case filed by 13 Saudi women journalists against an online news website for investigation by Security Affairs.
Riyadh Police, meanwhile, announced the launch of investigations into several cyber crimes allegedly committed with the intention of “harming others.”
Cyber crimes have become a phenomenon of late, said Riyadh Police spokesman Maj. Sami Al-Shuwairikh. He said police stations in the capital city have been receiving reports of libelous allegations posted on websites.
He said investigations included searching for the persons allegedly involved and referring them to the Prosecution General.
Al-Shuwairikh said specialists in cyber crimes who have joined the staff of Riyadh Police have successfully looked into several cases and have taken action according to the penal measures regulation.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki said the ministry is acting in line with the regulation for combating cyber crimes.
The chaos caused by online slander has drawn the attention of several Shoura Council members who said they would demand an explanation from officials of the Ministry of Information and Culture.
Dr. Shubaili Al-Qarni, Adviser to the Culture and Information Committee (CIC) in the Shoura Council said, “The committee will look into the ministry’s reports. If the reports do not include information on online news websites, the committee can refer to such information in the ministry’s annual report – if it sees that the situation requires control of the electronic media.”
He said control of websites is lost when it is handed over to those who “are not qualified to do so,” especially at a time when they should show their loyalty to the religion, nation, its leadership and people.
Ibrahim Al-Blaihi, a CIC member, called upon the authorities concerned to take swift and firm action against those making libelous allegations against people. He said those who are being defamed are the ones leading the march of enlightening the society. – Okaz

Kuwait: ‘Very few women at top posts shows nation’s lack of confidence in them’

2009-05-04T16:04:00.000-04:00

Arab Times

KUWAIT CITY, May 4: Only 23 Kuwaiti women have been appointed to various leadership posts, including ministers and undersecretaries — a clear indication of the country’s lack of confidence in women as decision makers, Dr Salwa Al-Jassar said during the ‘Women in Business’ conference at the American University in Kuwait Saturday.
Al-Jassar, chairperson of Women Empowerment Center and candidate from the Second Constituency, explained there are four types of women in terms of their contributions to the business sector - the employed who receive regular salaries in accordance with the financial or economic condition of the state, businesswomen, private sector workers, and the disabled who work from home or adequately equipped organizations.
Citing the demographic report published in January 2009, Al-Jassar said there are 1.250 million Kuwaitis out of the 3.3 million total population in the country, and Kuwaiti women constitute around 56 percent of the entire workforce. She added women make up 37 percent of the private sector workforce and 57 percent in the public sector, indicating most of these jobs are educational and administrative in nature.

Work
Al-Jassar pointed out most Kuwaiti women prefer to work in the public sector due to lesser work hours, higher salaries, more secure work conditions, flexible annual leaves, and guaranteed pensions, while the private sector is known for appreciating and rewarding competent employees, honing the skills of employees, and providing more opportunities for external activities.
As for the disadvantages of the public sector, Al-Jassar mentioned nepotism, mismanagement, outright violation of resolutions and laws, failure to reward outstanding employees, masked unemployment, and slow progress. “Women think the private sector is taxing due to longer work hours, lack of job guarantee, fewer vacation leaves, gender discrimination, and tough duties,” she opined.
Al-Jassar is currently conducting a study for Al-Kawthar Center on the obstacles that GCC women are facing in the business arena, as well as initiatives taken by different government and private institutions to support women. She said Kuwaiti women have to overcome a myriad of challenges to be recognized as a tough competitor in the business world.
Talking about the social obstacles, Al-Jassar affirmed Article 41 of the Constitution stipulates gender equality, yet gender discrimination still widespread in the private sector. She said women have limited options in the private sector as they have been restricted to certain jobs, thereby, discouraging Kuwaiti women to work in private companies. She added the general belief that work hinders mothers from performing their household duties efficiently is another obstacle. “These impediments led to the prevalence of social and financial dependence on men among families, instead of a healthier partnership. We should not also forget the administrative obstacles to women’s quest for leadership posts due to lack of trust in their abilities. Kuwait University consists of around 30 faculties, only two of which are run by female deans,” stated Al-Jassar.

About the personality-related hindrances, Al-Jassar mentioned lack of self-esteem among women, which prevents them from overcoming their fears and facing challenges. She said the lack of training and preparatory courses for women have also put them one step behind their male counterparts in terms of qualifications and expertise.
On the financial obstacles, Al-Jassar revealed the Middle Eastern societies still frown upon women running their own business due to lack of trust in their abilities, social norms and the ‘consumption’ mindset of women.
“Rapid technological developments made it even harder for women to find a niche in the private sector as computers can now perform functions previously done by humans,” Al-Jassar lamented. She admitted women had a difficult time keeping up with the rapid technological changes; hence, men have been given more privileges than women. “Our educational system falls short in teaching young women to give them a competitive edge in the labor market,” she concluded.

By Dahlia Kholaif
Arab Times Staff

Jordan: Recast as a ‘movement’, gender equality campaign expands its outreach

2009-05-04T15:05:00.000-04:00

The Jordan Times
By Thameen Kheetan

AMMAN - Women's rights activist Zein Qandour had no idea that an Arabic rock concert in the capital earlier this week would introduce her to a local gender equality campaign.

The 26-year-old social worker, who went to King Hussein Park on Saturday with some friends to watch her favourite band Jadal perform, discovered that the concert was part of a launch ceremony for the Gender Equality Movement (GEM).

During the 10-hour event, around 1,500 Jordanians and foreigners discussed human rights and equality between the two genders in an open day that also featured a skit on women's rights by two Jordanian actors.

Qandour believes that gender equality depends on various factors, including people's "social level, financial situation and education".

She noted that those who have more money are better educated, and thus are more aware of gender equality.

Qandour attributed this relationship between economic status and equality awareness to less interest in the issue in remote areas of the country compared to the capital - the richest city in Jordan - according to an official study conducted last year by the Department of Statistics.

While some at the open day lauded and encouraged the GEM initiative, others said they considered the rights and responsibilities of men and women to be different.

Iraqi national Diaa Jamil, 54, described the movement's idea as “interesting”, but added that equality would only become possible through "educating people".

"I am with any sort of equality that does not contradict our values, norms and religious teachings," said 40-year-old Saleh Zioud, explaining that males and females have "different natures”.

A 60-year-old woman, who requested anonymity, told The Jordan Times that there is no such thing as gender equality noting that each side had its own duties and rights in accordance with her religion, Islam.

"There is cooperation, giving and taking, but not equality," she said.

But Rawan Bazzari disagreed.

The 30-year-old believes society, not religion, is an obstacle to equality. Calling for "total" equality between men and women, Bazzari acknowledged that she does not foresee such a situation in Jordan in the near future.

"Not any time soon… we are in a tribal society where customs and traditions do not favour gender equality," she told The Jordan Times, but added that she is treated as an equal by her brothers at home and her male colleagues at work.

According to Bazzari, women take advantage of their unequal status to gain favours and shirk responsibilities. "Being a female, she usually gets things done for her."

Saturday’s event, funded by Freedom House, also hosted awareness booths representing 13 local and international NGOs and civil society organisations, including the Jordan Breast Cancer Programme and the Jordanian National Commission for Women.

From campaign

to movement

Held under the official sponsorship of the Greater Amman Municipality, the launch marked the transformation of the former Gender Equality Campaign into a “movement”, a decision organisers said was aimed at emphasising the continuity of their action.

Contrary to "movement", the word "campaign" suggests that it will come to an end, according to GEM leader Dina Liddawi, who said the new name would tell the public the initiative is "endless".

To this end, she and six other GEM volunteers will now focus their efforts on fundraising for the movement's future activities.

During its first year, the campaign commenced with street dialogues in different cities where young activists used brochures, stickers and word of mouth to raise awareness on the issue of gender equality.

This week's event was part of a new approach that GEM activists will use to open a societal debate on the issue of gender equality among Jordanians, incorporating larger events and performances to make their cause more visible.

Liddawi noted that the movement’s expanding presence is in large part thanks to the energy of its volunteers.

"The boys and the girls working with us have become more committed," she said, adding that this made it easier for the movement to address the public.

"People are accepting the idea of gender equality more and more," she noted.

Among the newcomers in GEM is university student Tamara Abu Khader, who said she heard about the campaign through a friend.

"When you explain the professional, societal and educational aspects of gender equality to people, they accept the idea," she told The Jordan Times.

"We do not have anything to do with either religion, or customs and traditions… we’re talking about political, legal and civil rights."

Jordan: Women activists call on gov’t to lift remaining reservations on CEDAW

2009-05-04T15:01:00.001-04:00

The Jordan Times
By Hani Hazaimeh

AMMAN - Women activists this week reiterated their call on the government to remove its reservations on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), while other parties described the agreement as a form of cultural globalisation.

Earlier this year, the government decided to lift its reservations on paragraph four of Article 15 of the convention, which gives women freedom of mobility.

Speaking at a workshop to discuss the convention, Jordanian National Commission for Women Secretary General Asma Khader welcomed the government’s decision, noting that women activists have strongly advocated for lifting the reservations.

In July 1992, the Kingdom signed the convention which was ratified and published in the Official Gazette in August 2007 with three reservations related to the citizenship, housing and women's mobility clauses in the Personal Status Law.

"We call on the government to lift the two remaining reservations," Khader said, pointing out that Islam stresses gender equality and protects women rights, but "individual malpractices restrain some of these rights".

"Differences in opinion over the agreement should not stop us from exchanging views and remarks on CEDAW till we reach a common ground," Khader added.

Criticising the convention and describing it as "a cultural globalisation", Marwan Faouri, president of the Moderation Assembly for Thought and Culture, said it was a type of control practised by the UN on member countries.

"The agreement is not consistent with our religion and traditions and it will change our national identity," he told The Jordan Times, adding that it adopts the views of the liberals who do not represent Arab Muslim communities.

Other participants at Tuesday’s workshop, organised by Al Urdun Al Jadid Research Centre, focused on the citizenship clause and urged the government to grant nationality to children of Jordanian women married to foreigners.

According to a study by the Arab Women’s Organisation released last year, based on the 2004 national census, around 12,000 out of 1.7 million married women in the Kingdom are wed to non-Jordanians, with 5.5 children per woman.

Earlier this week, the Islamist movement called on the government to withdraw from the CEDAW, saying the treaty will lead to a myriad of social problems in the country.

"Families in Jordan face the threat of total collapse under CEDAW," warned the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Kuwait: Kuwait's Salafis call voting for women a sin

2009-05-04T14:53:00.000-04:00

Al Arabiya

KUWAIT (Ahmed Abdullah)

Kuwait's Islamist Salafi movement called Monday for a boycott of women candidates in the upcoming parliamentary elections on the grounds that public offices are reserved only for men, sparking outrage from female candidates and activists.

Voting for women is considered a sin, said Fuhaid al-Hailam, of the Islamic Salafi Alliance politburo, according to the Salafi's interpretation of a saying by the Prophet Muhammad to the effect that a nation will not prosper if a woman leads it.

Election sin

" What is prohibited as an aim is also prohibited as a means "
Fuhaid al-Hailam, Islamic Salafi Alliance politburo"What is prohibited as an aim is also prohibited as a means," he told Al Arabiya. "Voting for women is the means of their access to parliamentary membership, thus it is prohibited."

Although Kuwaiti law permits women to hold seat in parliament, Hailam called on female candidates to withdraw from the elections to protect themselves and the voters from a practice he labeled as contrary to Islam.

Nineteen of the 282 registered candidates are women, down from the 28 who registered last year and 31 in 2006, according to the Kuwait Times. The Majlis al-Umma, Kuwait’s National Assembly, was dissolved in March in the aftermath of tension between the executive and legislative authorities.

He denied the fatwa, or religious ruling, is politically motivated to undermine women's chances to win seats in the parliament.

"This has always been the movement's stance and we have always objected to giving women the right to run in elections. We are reiterating our opinion now because it is the right time to declare how legitimate voting is,” he said, adding that the movement recommended that the law not be applied.

Strident objections

" Kuwaiti laws that gave women the right to run for parliament are not against Islamic laws "
Fatima al-Abdeli, candidateCritics slammed the conservative Salafi movement’s statements and urged the government to distance itself from such a position.

Parliamentary candidate Fatima al-Abdeli, a woman’s rights activist who ran in the two previous elections, dismissed the call to withdraw and said the statements betrayed a state of intellectual bankruptcy.

"They have nothing to say," she told Al Arabiya. "Kuwaiti laws that gave women the right to run for parliament are not against Islamic laws."

Woman’s rights activist Fatima al-Abdeli ran in the two previous elections
Abdeli called upon the Kuwaiti government to declare the movement's statements void and said that female candidates intend to organize a press conference to respond to the fatwa.

"This fatwa will harm women candidates and the Kuwaiti people might be deceived by it. We are not going to stand still while this happens. Women should not be told what to do," said Abdeli.

Observers give women better odds of winning seats in this year’s elections despite failing to win any in the 2006 or 2008 elections, citing more extensive political experience women gained during this time and greater acceptance of women's role in public life.

Former Planning Minister Massouma al-Mubarak, the first female cabinet member, was appointed in 2005 and is running in the 2009 elections, a move that observers said shows that women are gaining momentum. Women were granted the right to vote in 2005.

The election war flared when several candidates were arrested and charged with slandering the government. Some parties like the Ummah party, which is not officially recognized, said it would boycott the elections.

Iran: Women Call For Gender Equality Ahead Of Iran's Presidential Vote

2009-05-04T14:49:00.000-04:00

Liberty Radio
May 03, 2009
By Golnaz Esfandiari

Former lawmaker and journalist Azam Taleghani is one of two women to have announced plans to run in Iran's presidential election in June.

In the unlikely event Taleghani were to become president, she would encounter obstacles not often associated with a head of state.

To attend state functions abroad, for example, she would need her husband's permission to leave the country.

If she were to testify before a court, her testimony would be worth half that of a man, and she would still not have equal divorce or inheritance rights.

is because, despite her status as the holder of the country's highest office, Taleghani would still be a woman, making her subject to the same forms of legal discrimination faced by all women in the Islamic republic.

The disparity between the sexes has led Taleghani and a number of other women's rights advocates and prominent figures such as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi to call on presidential candidates to put equality for women on their agendas.

They have created a new coalition that includes secular members, national religious activists, former lawmakers, journalists, student activists, and others.

Joining the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and changing Iran's Constitution in order to include gender equality "without any conditions" are their main demands.

'Relatively Open Atmosphere'

Women's rights activists see the "relatively open atmosphere" in the run-up to the June 12 election as a good opportunity to renew their demands for equal rights.

Marzieh Mortazi Langarudi, one of the members of the new coalition, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that activists hope to increase awareness of the forms of discrimination women face in Iran.

They have learned that they should set their demands in a way that can be measured."It makes the candidates committed and brings their attention to women's demands," Langarudi says. "At the same time, it increases the demands in the society and in a way it helps the [democratization process]."

Activists fighting against legal discrimination in Iran have come under growing state pressure in the past four years and a number of them have been summoned to court, harassed, and detained. Several have even been jailed.

A leading women's magazine was closed down last year for "offering a dark picture of the Islamic republic" and for "compromising the psyche and the mental health" of its readers.

Activists says there have also been attempts by the government to keep women at home and limit their role in society, despite the fact that women account for more than 60 percent of students attending university.

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has said that women in Iran enjoy the highest level of freedom.

In a comment made in 2005 during his election campaign, Ahmadinejad said that women's adherence to strict rules on dress and appearance, including that their hair be hidden, should not be an issue. Yet following his election, the crackdown on dress intensified, resulting in many women being detained and harassed for not respecting the full Islamic hijab.

Ways That Can Be Measured

Bahareh Hedayat, a women's rights campaigner and member of Iran's largest pro-reform student group, tells RFE/RL that Ahmadinejad's presidency has demonstrated that women cannot rely on election promises alone.

"It actually served as a good experience among women's rights activists and also among others who are fighting for their rights," Hedayat says. "They have learned that they should set their demands in a way that can be measured."

Bahareh HedayatHedayat said women's rights activists are calling on presidential candidates to announce concrete plans for giving women equal rights. She said they have not endorsed any of the candidates.

Hedayat and other women's rights advocates want several articles of Iran's Constitution to be amended, with the principle of unconditional gender equality to be included in them. Among the changes sought is an addition to Article 21 stating that "the government must ensure the rights of women in all respects, in conformity with Islamic criteria."

Some critics believe that such changes under the current Islamic establishment are not realistic. The president has limited power and the real power is in the hands of bodies controlled by the conservatives.

But activists believe a serious commitment to women's rights by the country's future government could lead to positive changes.

Powerful Guardians Council

During a press conference last week in which the activists laid out their demands, presidential candidate Taleghani said that some officials see women as "slaves and second-class citizens."

Taleghani, the daughter of a prominent ayatollah, has previously attempted to run for president, but in the end was disqualified by the powerful Guardians Council that must approve each election candidate.

In 2005, all 89 women who registered to run for president were rejected, including a conservative member of parliament. The Guardians Councils effectively said that women cannot run for the presidency, citing a passage in Iran's Constitution that says the president should be elected from among "religious and political rejal."

Rejal is an Arabic word that means "personalities." While many say "rejal" includes women, the Guardians Council has said in the past that the word refers only to men.

However, this year a spokesman from that same oversight body said that there are no "legal restraints" preventing women from seeking presidential office.

Guardians Council spokesman Abbas Ali Khadkhodayi was quoted as saying on April 11 that the council "has never disqualified candidates only because they have been men or women," and that disqualifications resulted only from potential candidates failing to have the necessary qualifications.

Some welcomed the comment, while others remain skeptical.

"The question is, why in the past 30 years has no woman been deemed qualified by the Guardians Council to run as a candidate
in a presidential election?" asks women's rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh.

Morocco: Fund Supports Fourteen Projects to Finance the Representation of Women

2009-04-30T15:55:00.000-04:00

Le Matin, 04.28.09
After the establishment of a fund to support the representation of women, and the installation of its committee members, the decision was taken to sign several agreements to finance eligible projects. 9 political parties and 5 associations will benefit from the funds. The parties who will benefit are: organization of Istiqlalian women, Party of Justice and Development (PJD), the National Rally of Independents (RNI), the Popular Movement (MP), the Socialist Union of Popular Forces ( USFP), the Constitutional Union (UC) Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), the Women's section of the Progress and Socialism Party (PPS) and the Socialist Unity Party (PSU). The associations are: Azzahraa forum, Abbas Kabbaj Foudation, The National Association for the Protection of Children and Families, and the renewal of the consciousness for women.

Kuwait: 73 % citizens may head to polling stations: Study

2009-04-30T15:51:00.000-04:00

Kuwait Times

KUWAIT: Seventy three percent citizens will head to the ballot boxes to cast their votes on May 16, the findings of a comprehensive study conducted by Ipson International Company revealed. The study also found that 14 percent of citizens will abstain from voting while the remaining 13 percent are undecided about voting. It pointed out that 80 percent of male voters have decided to cast votes while only 66 percentage of females exercise their rights. The average age of most voters is more than 45 years. Farwaniya constituency will receive the largest number of voters when compared to other Kuwaiti governorates, reported Al-Watan. The study added that 80 percent of voters from Farwaniya will vote on May 16. Seventy five percent of voters in Mubarak Al-Kabeer area, 69 percent in Jahra, 71 percent in Hawally, 74 percent in the capital and 67 percent of voters of Ahmadi have decided to cast votes. Sixteen percent of voters from Ahmadi have decided not to vote and 17 percent are still undecided about voting.

Kuwait: Women determined to restore normalcy to parliament

2009-04-30T15:43:00.000-04:00

Al Watan Daily

KUWAIT: A number of political activists and candidates have underscored the importance of giving women the opportunity to gain access to the National Assembly to contribute towards the nation''s development.
The activists made the appeal during a symposium held at Kuwait Bar Association Tuesday amid a strong presence of concerned individuals.
Making comments at the symposium, former minister and First Constituency candidate Masouma AlـMubarak lamented that although the first consultative council was set up in 1921, women have not been able to make headway as far as active participation in politics is concerned.
"After a long struggle, Kuwaiti women were granted their full political rights on May 16, 2005, which was followed by the appointment of two women in the Municipal Council as well as the appointment of Kuwait''s first ever female minister on June 12, 2005," she said, but arguing that there was still much to be done in terms of women in politics.
For her part, Thikra AlـRasheedi indicated that the main obstacle to women''s quest to gain access to parliament "is the fact that they have failed to underscore the importance of their participation in the electoral process."
She explained that women "have been always on the defensive as they stressed their independence and competence."
Meanwhile, Dr. Heila AlـMekeimy reiterated women''s strong determination "to restore the normal parliamentary life, which has been profoundly marred by disputes and incessant political wrangling."
She went on to explain that having women in the parliament "will create a sort of balance, since women are calm and sensible in their dialogue."
She criticized some MPs for using "vague language in the parliament that the common man fails to comprehend."
Moreover, she commented on the unprecedented political instability that Kuwait has witnessed, and said that voters must be decisive to end the paradox that exists in the political arena by voting for women, "since they are most likely to cause a change."
She lamented the fact that many citizens, especially women, were not included in the electoral rolls.
Finally, she expressed hope that AlـMubarak and AlـRasheedi would be registered as MPs "in order to regain a normal and healthy parliamentary environment."

Bahrain: Five laws passed without changes

2009-04-30T15:28:00.000-04:00

Gulf Daily News
MPs yesterday approved five laws passed to them by the Shura Council without discussion or amendments.

Both chambers are in dispute over several articles in the five laws but MPs decided yesterday that they could pass them without any delay because there were no major differences.

The laws will be now ratified by His Majesty King Hamad.

Among them is granting equal rights to the children of Bahraini women married to expatriates as those with Bahraini fathers.

The Shura Council decided to include a new article last month in the law.

It stipulates that children of Bahraini women have to be permanent residents in order to benefit from equal rights.

The bill allows expatriate wives the same treatment as their Bahraini counterparts in services such as government fees, education, health and an exemption from residency visa requirements.

Parliament also agreed with the Shura Council to reject an amendment among several others to the Trade Unions Law that would have allowed more than one union in the same establishment on the basis that it would create tension and division between employees.

MPs also agreed with councillors on setting up a new medical licences and services authority, after a vote to reject the Shura Council amendments was halted by parliament chairman Khalifa Al Dhahrani early this month, asking MPs to study it further.

They also approved an amended bill by the council granting GCC nationals equal rights as Bahraini businessmen when setting up businesses in Bahrain.

Parliament was also on its way to insist on its decision in regard to three other laws amended by the council but decided to postpone discussions until tomorrow's extraordinary session, which was later cancelled as MPs voted for a day off.

Parliament had earlier approved a bill to pay pensions of the deceased in the government, private and military sectors to distant relatives if they had no close family members.

However, the council rejected the bill, saying that pensions were not inheritance and could not be dealt with in the manner MPs wanted.

Services committee chairman Dr Ali Ahmed said parliament was hoping to approve all of Shura's decisions but found it difficult to approve the remaining three bills.

"I have been very lenient with councillors despite some disagreements on their approach to articles in the medical licences and services authority," he said.

"My committee liked the addition of children of Bahraini women and the ban on the formation of several unions in one establishment and according to that I recommended their approval. "But I have a huge dispute with councillors over the pension laws and parliament would have insisted on its previous decision if MPs did not decide to postpone discussing it. "Thankfully the major laws have been approved and are now in the hands of His Majesty King Hamad to ratify."