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Fight
for Women's Rights Goes
Bahrain Tribune - 18 October, 2008
A
political society and a human rights group here have joined hands to
encourage people to sign an online petition calling for ratifying in full
the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW).
The National Democratic Action Society (NDAS) and the Bahrain Human
Rights Society are coordinators of the first of its kind- Regional
Campaign for the withdrawal of reservation and ratification of the
Optional Protocol to CEDAW by Arab states. “We need to create awareness
on the subject which is being clearly ignored. The civil societies are
now doing the job of the government in launching a campaign to lift
reservations on CEDAW,” said Fareeda Ghulam, head of the women affairs
section at NDAS.
People
can sign the online petition by visiting - www.rabatcall.epetitions.net
Ghulam said the bilingual petition in Arabic and English is open for
everyone. The petition has been signed by 290 people so far since
February this year.
Bahrain officials had announced a national campaign regarding the CEDAW
issue , when the Kingdom’s human rights record was reviewed in April this
year at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. This time,
Geneva will be once again the venue for local activists when Bahrain’s
CEDAW report will be reviewed on October 30.
Ghulam who will be attending the high level meet said they were hoping to
collect as many signatures before the meet. The CEDAW was ratified by the
Bahrain government in 2002 but with reservations.. There were reservations
on some articles concerning family law, equality, freedom of movement,
and residence. Recently, Bahraini Fadheela Mahroos failed to secure a
seat onboard the UN committee on CEDAW. There are a total of 23 members
on the CEDAW committee, which is in charge of monitoring governments on
their compliance with the treaty.
The committee will review Bahrain’s report and the shadow report
submitted by the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society. The CEDAW report of
the Kingdom, which would be reviewed, states that in 2002 women
constituted 26.4% of the members of the various unions’ board of
directors. In the civil sector, it said there were 15 women’s
associations, 15 women’s committees emanating from religious and
professional associations. The report further said that five of Bahrain’s
36 labour unions were headed by women.
In addition, it said women comprise 15% of Bahraini diplomatic missions
according to the estimates of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thirty
Bahraini women currently work in a number of international and regional
organisations compared to 19 in 2003, the report stated.
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IMPORTANT:PLEASE GO TO WEBSITE
LINK TO SIGN CALL FOR SUPPORT
Text available in Arabic,
English, & French
Rabat
Call for Support: "Equality Without Reservations"
We, representatives of women’s and human rights NGOs in the
Arab countries, meeting in Rabat on 8-10 June 2006, decided to launch a
regional campaign under the slogan “Equality without Reservation”. The
campaign aims to urge Arab countries to withdraw reservations to the
international Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW), and ratify its Optional Protocol.
The Arab World is a wide region containing
enormous human and economic resources, and varied cultural resources that
has greatly enriched the common human heritage.
At the same time, however, the Arab region is
suffering from the greatest disparities between men and women regarding
their enjoyment of human rights, persisting legal discrimination against
women, and serious violations of their human rights.
• Out of 21 Arab countries 18 countries have
ratified CEDAW, but these ratifications have been accompanied by serious
reservations that contradict the very purpose of the Convention,
particularly its principle of equality and non-discrimination between men
and women.
• These countries have not harmonized their
national legislation to comply with the CEDAW convention,.
• With only one exception, none of the
countries in the Arab region have ratified the Optional Protocol to
CEDAW.
Hence:
We call upon Governments of the region
to establish equality between men and women in dignity and civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights, and guarantee full
citizenship for women through:
1- Withdrawing all reservations to
CEDAW, and take appropriates to
harmonize national legislations with CEDAW’s provisions
2- Ratifying the Optional Protocol of
CEDAW, as a necessary tool for
monitoring and addressing individual and collective violations of women’s
rights, and combating violence against women.
We call upon all progressive forces in our
region and all over the world to support this campaign at the regional
and national levels, so that we can achieve our common goal: substantive
equality between men and women without reservation.
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