Women in the Arab world are still denied equality of opportunity, although
their disempowerment is a critical factor crippling the Arab nations’ quest to
return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture,
according to a new United Nations-sponsored report
released today.
It not only calls for all Arab women to be given equal access to essential
health, education and all types of activities outside the family, but also urges
temporary adoption of affirmative action to expand such participation, thus
allowing centuries-old structures of discrimination to be dismantled.
“Full participation and empowerment of women, as citizens, as producers, as
mothers and sisters, will be a source of strength for Arab Nations and will
allow the Arab World to reach greater prosperity, greater influence and higher
levels of human development,” said UN Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator
Kemal Dervis, whose agency sponsored the Arab Human Development Report 2005:
Toward the rise of women in the Arab world.
It commends some states for “significant, progressive changes” in tackling
fundamental gender biases prevalent in the region, but cites a range of
obstacles to equitable development, from cosmetic reforms with little real
effect to violent conflict, foreign occupations and terrorism casting a shadow
over the tantalizing hints of progress.
The fundamental obstacle to the rise of women remains how to deal with
conflicts between the needs of a productive economy and internationally agreed
standards on the one hand and traditions and customs on the other, according to
the report.
The strongest inhibitors of development for many Arab citizens, women and
men, have been foreign occupations and the ‘war on terror,’ with basic rights
from the right to life through civil and political rights to economic and social
rights continuing to be violated.
This negative environment, together with the spectre of extremist terrorism,
which the report condemns in the strongest possible terms, damages the prospects
for a broad revival by impeding reform and obstructing opportunities for
peaceful and just solutions to the occupation of Arab lands and the restriction
of Arab freedoms and rights.
A continued impasse over these matters may push the region further towards
extremism and violent protest in the absence of a fair system of governance at
the global level that ensures security and prosperity for all, according to the
report, the fourth and final part of an annual study of Arab development.
“To embrace the courage and activism of women in the Arab world is to
champion the catalysts of human development,” UNDP regional director Amat Al
Alim Alsoswa said. “Hard-won gains in women’s rights are the culmination of
decades of committed engagement by generations of women’s rights campaigners and
their allies in Governments across the region.”
Islamic movements, often characterized in the West as uniformly malevolent
have in reality been in many cases at the vanguard of women’s empowerment, with
most mainstream movements witnessing notable growth of an enlightened leadership
among their relatively younger generations, the report says.
“In the last five decades, the internal dynamics of these movements, their
relationship to mainstream society and their positions on vital societal issues,
on human rights and on good governance and democracy have undergone significant,
progressive changes,” it adds.
But these positive developments have not cancelled out other currents outside
mainstream Arab society that could seek to curtail freedom and democracy if they
came to power, especially with regard to women.
Among achievements that have been secured, the report cites the presence of
at least one woman in most Arab countries’ parliament, cabinet or local council
but it warns that political reform, at every level, must go beyond the cosmetic
and the symbolic: “In all cases…real decisions in the Arab world are, at all
levels, in the hands of men,” it
says.
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December 2006 – Women in the Arab world are still denied equality of
opportunity, although their disempowerment is a critical factor crippling the
Arab nations’ quest to return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce,
learning and culture, according to a new United Nations-sponsored report
released today.