In 2006, WLP will stand in solidarity with partners in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Gulf regions to call for women's equal citizenship rights, including equal rights to confer nationality to their spouses and children. In the majority of MENA and Gulf countries, only men have the legal right to confer nationality to non-national spouses and children.
"Nationality is a case in point of how citizenship in this region is gendered...whether or not you are a national will determine very much whether you're have the right to representation, whether you have the right to social entitlements, whether you're a full citizen or not. So when the laws in most countries in the MENA and Gulf regions say that a citizen is someone born of a father of that country only, this clearly says that the state considers that only men are real citizens," said Lina Abou-Habib, Director of WLP's Lebanese partner Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action (CRTD-A), one of the organizations leading the regional campaign for Arab women's right to nationality.
Women's right to equal citizenship is guaranteed by the majority of Arab constitutions, as well as by international law. CRTD-A is working with WLP's Moroccan partner Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM); Bahrain Women's Society (BWS); Algerian NGO Centre de l'Information et de Documentation sur les Droits de l'Enfant et de la Femme (CIDDEF); WLP's Egyptian partner the Forum for Women in Development (FWID); Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW); and the Syrian Women's League (SWL) to call for their governments to reform nationality laws, recognizing constitutional commitments to equal citizenship.
The current status of the law is causing immediate suffering for women married to non-nationals and their families. With CRTD-A support, President of BWS Wajeeha Al Baharna held a meeting for 140 women married to non-nationals in Bahrain to document their experiences and to get them involved in the campaign.
"When we met with these women, they were experiencing a great deal of insecurity and instability within their families...Their children are born in Bahrain, their families and friends are all Bahraini, but they cannot have the feeling of security and belonging because they are not fully accepted and don't have political rights. They are considered foreigners," said Al Baharna.
The children of women married to non-nationals must obtain residency permits, which need to be renewed regularly. They are denied access to state benefits, such as free healthcare and education. They are treated as foreign students when applying to university and often face restrictions in the field of employment.
Women married to non-nationals often come under psychological pressure because of the difficulties faced by their families. During the extensive research carried out by CRTD-A and regional partners into the experiences of women married to non-nationals, women gave testimony describing their feelings of anger and guilt, illustrated by statements such as, "I am the reason why my daughters have no future," and, "I wish I could die to stop regretting what I did to my children."
The organizations' regional campaign has employed a range of strategies to secure women's right to nationality and end the difficulties faced by mixed-nationality families, including in-depth multi-country research to assess the extent of the problem; intensive communications to raise public awareness of the issue; lobbying parliamentarians to gain their support; building alliances with NGOs; and providing legal aid to women married to non-nationals to bring cases against their governments.
In Algeria, the nationality law has already been reformed to allow women to confer their nationality to their spouses and children, and in Egypt, reform enables women to confer their nationality to their children only. In these success cases, the goal of the regional campaign is to monitor the implementation of this reform and ensure that women are informed about and can access their nationality rights. In Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Syria, reform has yet to take place and advocacy to reform nationality laws continues.
Both Abou-Habib and Al Baharna agree that the regional nature of the campaign is crucial to its success. "The regional aspect of the campaign undermines the arguments against granting nationality to women at the national level. It demonstrates that the real issue is patriarchy and a male vision of citizenship, rather than all the silly political arguments that are made when we demand women's right to nationality," said Abou-Habib.
In 2006, WLP aims to expand the circle of support for this crucial campaign. Join us in taking action for women's citizenship rights.
SIGN our petition calling for legal recognition of women's right to confer their nationality to their husbands and children and full implementation of this right in the Middle East and North Africa and Gulf regions.
URGE government representatives in Lebanon to advocate for women's right to nationality. We are focusing attention on Lebanon for the initial months of the campaign.
DONATE money to the campaign.