In the Middle East, Modest Progress Made on Women's Rights
Washington - A new report on women's rights in the Middle East and North Africa finds some progress but "a long road ahead."
Of all parts of the world, it is this region in which "the gap between the rights of men and those of women has been the most visible and severe," says the report by Freedom House ( http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=444 ), an independent, nonprofit organization that studies and advocates for human rights worldwide.
This is Freedom House's second effort to analyze the restrictions on women, country by country, in 17 Arab nations and territories; this report also includes Iran. The study found improvement, overall, in 15 of the countries since the release of the first report in 2005, with the most progress coming in Kuwait, Algeria and Jordan. Three places that have faced violent internal conflicts and a rise in religious extremism - Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian Territories - lost ground in women's freedoms.
The report "charts progress as well as remaining challenges, giving countries a compass for the way forward," said Dalia Mogahed, a Freedom House trustee and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.
Ronald Schlicher, the U.S. principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said he was struck by "a substantial deficit in human rights" documented in most of the region, but he welcomed progress in the economic, educational and political lives of women, "and for the broader society as well." The State Department provided some of the funding for the Freedom House project.
Schlicher said the greatest gains came in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which had scored the lowest in the report five years ago. In 2005, Kuwait gave women the same political rights as men, and four years later, Kuwaitis elected women to parliament for the first time. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates appointed women to judgeships for the first time. And women in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar gained the right to travel without the permission of a guardian.
The study evaluated each country on the extent to which women who live there enjoy the principles included in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On a scale of 1 to 5 - with 5 meaning that the government and others almost never prevent women from exercising their rights and that women almost never face gender-based discrimination - no country scored higher than 3.6 in any of the five categories on which they were rated:
. Nondiscrimination and access to justice.
. Autonomy, security and freedom of the person.
. Equal rights and equal opportunity.
. Political rights and civic voice.
. Social and cultural rights.
Ten of the 18 countries and territories failed to score as high as 3 in any of the five categories. A score of 3 means that women sometimes are not free to exercise their human rights, that they have "adequate human rights protections but they are poorly implemented," and that they "occasionally face gender-based discrimination."
One country, Saudi Arabia, scored below 2 in every category. A score of 2 means that women's rights are mostly restricted, that women "have very few adequate human rights protections and they often face gender-based discrimination."
Sanja Kelly, who directed the Freedom House project, said the trend is in the right direction for the region's women. "In several areas, women's rights have actually improved, and nowhere is this more evident than in education," she said. Female literacy rates are up, and in many countries women far outnumber men on college campuses.
They also have made economic gains. "Women are more represented in the work force than ever before," Kelly said.
Still, "the main message here is that women in the Middle East are being discriminated against in all aspects of their lives," she said.
Among the issues that Kelly said are common in most countries of the region are laws that set the status of women below that of men in court and on family matters; laws that prevent women, but not men, from conveying citizenship to their spouses and children; the acceptance of harassment and violence against women; and laws that promise equality but that are ignored.
Rana Husseini, a journalist and author of the report's section on Jordan, said her country had made important improvements in the lives of women. One problem she has covered is "honor killings," in which a man will kill a woman in his family over a matter of honor. Such killings are tolerated in much of the Middle East, but Jordan has set up a special tribunal to deal with them and handed down stiff prison terms. "We need to eliminate and erase any law that excuses the murder of women," Husseini said.
Huda Ahmed, who wrote the Iraq report, said women there have far more rights on paper than in the reality of a nation still subject to violent unrest. "The problem is, for every step forward, we take 10 steps backward, and always related to violence," she said.
Those involved in the study said women in many countries face a large gap between what the law says and what some in society permit. "We have very strict laws against sexual harassment, but women are being harassed in the streets, in the workplace, even in their homes," said Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian activist and head of the North Africa Bureau of the American Islamic Congress ( http://www.aicongress.org/ ).
Ziada said that Egyptian women can vote and hold office but that they "are usually used as decoration" by political parties.
"The solution is not about working on laws. The solution is about working on the mentality," she added.
One area that Ziada said offers promise for women is the spread of the Internet. Online, she said, women and men are equal because they cannot be distinguished from one another, and women can use that experience to look for equality in the rest of their lives.
"We all know that once we empower women, we empower all of society," she said.
The report is available in English at the Freedom House Web site, including a chart and graphs ( http://freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/section/269.pdf ) (PDF, 68KB) showing and comparing the countries' scores in each category of women's rights. The group is posting Arabic translations ( http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=384&key=271&parent=23&report=86 ) of the report and the country-by-country sections. The Freedom House program that focuses on rights in Iran, Gozaar ( http://www.gozaar.org/ ), has posted a Persian translation ( http://www.gozaar.org/template1.php?id=1343&language=persian ) of the report on women's rights in Iran.
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