WUNRN
SYRIA - WOMEN REFLECT ON RARE
POLITICAL VICTORY - HALT
OF DISEMPOWERING REVISION OF
PERSONAL STATUS LAW
By Sarah Shourd
Monday, June 7, 2010
Jailed activist writer Sarah Shourd filed this
story in July, shortly before she was seized by Iranian border forces during a
hiking trip in Iraqi
"The only rights a woman (would have had) under this
law is to food and shelter from her husband," Rodaina Haidar, a member of
Syria Women's Observatory, a women's rights watchdog group based in Damascus,
said in an interview in 2009, shortly after the bill stalled. "Like an
animal, she needs her husband's permission to leave the house. If she wants to
work, he can divorce her. He must even give her permission to visit her family
under the proposed law."
But in an unusual show of
organizational strength, women's rights groups here managed to turn it back.
A 99-page draft version of the law--marked urgent--began
popping up in the e-mails of nongovernmental advocacy groups and women's rights
activists all over
Some of the opposition gathered strength online. A
petition on Facebook, which is officially banned in
By mid-July of 2009, the Ministry of Information
announced that the law would be handed over to the Ministry of Justice, which
put the revision on the shelf. No further efforts to revise the laws have been
made since then.
Sense of Amazement
Syrian blogger Yasser Sadeq expressed amazement at the
success of the political opposition. "This kind of participation in
politics is rare in
The law would have made it easier for a man to divorce
his wife and nearly impossible for her to do the same. It would have allowed
Christian men to marry more than one woman. The law technically raised the
marriage age for young women to 17 from 16, but it also allowed for some to
marry at 13 if the young woman had reached puberty and had parental consent.
It would have denied a married woman the right to work or
even travel without her husband's approval.
But none of that came to pass.
Instead, in a country where political opposition is
virtually non-existent, public protest and an effective media campaign
persuaded Parliament to reconsider.
Bassam Al Khadi, director of the Women's Observatory, is
encouraged by this legal victory.
"Our dreams will continue of a modern Syria, not a
Taliban Syria. Our country is ours and not theirs," she said last year.
Personal status or family laws are a source of contention
in many Arab countries. They are a group of laws governing family, marriage,
divorce and child custody, and often delineate the special rights of women and
children.
Robust Set of Rights
Syrian women enjoy relatively robust rights in the
context of other Arab countries. Women here make up 23 percent of Parliament,
versus 2 percent in Lebanon. But provisions in the nationality code, personal
status code and penal code all make women dependent on their husbands in
various ways.
In one recent change to the penal code, Syria's President
Bashar al-Assad on July 1 abolished Article 548 of the penal code, according to
Human Rights Watch. That part of the law "waived punishment for a man
found to have killed a female family member in a case 'provoked' by
'illegitimate sex acts,' as well as for a husband who killed his wife because of
an extramarital affair."
Human rights groups and other activists portrayed the
step as too small since it still doesn't punish honor crimes as harshly as
other murders.
Syrians in the past year have continued to use Facebook
as a way to battle for women's rights. One group, with more than 2,000 members,
calls for the introduction of civil marriage in a country where religious
courts rule wedlock and divorce.
"Every couple should have the right to get married
in
Some online users say the time for such laws is long
gone.
"When as a people we reach a certain level of
maturity, we are entitled to choose for ourselves, our partner, and our path in
life," posted one user. "The law should have nothing to say regarding
who you might want to give it a try with."
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