Since its adoption in 1979, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is considered the most comprehensive global human rights paper on the concepts of modern women’s rights. The League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic States have issued similar papers clarifying their views on women’s rights, and they advocated persuasively for a comparative idea about women’s rights. However, the well-known United Nations document continues to be the International Bill of Women’s Rights at the international level. The Arab countries have signed the agreement, except Sudan and Somalia, after most of the Arab countries reserved some of the Convention articles. Despite all of this, Women in the Arab world suffer from significant discrimination not only at the social level but also at the level of laws that regulate the lives of women in Arab countries and where some of them constitute a major and flagrant violation of their rights. It can be noted the most important challenges and problems facing women and seeks to establish discrimination in Arab societies at the following levels:
* Laws of granting citizenship:
The Arab women do not grant their children their Arab nationality, which carries if she is married to a foreign man, in return, the Arab man grants the nationality to his children in case of marriage to a foreigner. In order to preserve this distinction between Arab men and Arab women in the right of nationality, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria objected the Article 9 of the Convention of Women’s Rights, which states the need for equality between men and women in granting nationality to children.
* Personal Status Laws :
* In the custody
The laws of the Arab countries related to custody are similar. In most of these countries, the custody of women for males ends at a lower age than for females, with the exception of Jordan, Morocco, and Lebanon. In Lebanon, the age of custody for both males and females was standardized and raised to 12 years, while it was 7 years for the boy and 9 for the girl. However, Jordan amended the Personal Status Law in 2010, to unify the age of the mother’s custody with her child and raise it to the age of 15. Noting that the mother’s marriage in all Arab countries drops her right to custody except Morocco, in which the Personal Status Law gives mothers the custody of their children after their second marriage until they reach the age of seven. In contrast, the right to custody of the father shall not be waived in the case of a second marriage.
* In marriage and divorce
The Arab personal status laws distinguish male from female in his ability to marry more than one woman, 4 women according to the majority of Arab countries’ laws, therefore, the Arab states objected to Article 16 of the CEDAW agreement, concerning equality between men and women in marriage transactions and contracts. There is also no equality in the exercise of administrative contracts for marriage and divorce, between Arab men and women. While Arab men can make contracts alone, Arabic women need a guardian for marriage contracts. According to the laws, the Arab man also is granted the ability to end the marriage and they divorce under conditions that Arab women do not enjoy.
* In inheritance
Many Arab legislations derive their legal provisions governing personal status from religious legislation, which states that male has in the inheritance the portion of two females. While in countries such as Lebanon and Syria, there are 22 principles were applied stating that “every religious sect has its authority in the field of personal status, and in inheritance, every woman is subjected to the law of the community to which she belongs.” In both cases, these provisions are discriminatory to women; the factors of inequality are devoted to family planning, and power relations within the family institution.
* Freedom of movement
Some Arab countries objected to the right of women to freedom of movement and freedom of residence choice, the Arab personal status laws require that a wife must be placed in the marital home while the consent of a guardian is required for a woman to obtain her passport, or if she is traveling with her children outside the country. This particularity prompted the majority of Arab countries to refrain from Article 15, in the CEDAW Convention, the fourth paragraph in particular states that: “States Parties shall granted to men and women the same rights concerning the law relating to the movement of persons and the freedom to choose their place of residence and living. “
Penal Code
* In Abortion
Abortion is a crime in the Arab countries laws, whose legislation states the contraindications of a pregnant woman’s desire to get rid of the fetus, which is considered a violation of the freedom to deal with her body.
* In rape
With regard to the crime of “rape”, the legislation of the Arab States exempts the sexual aggressor from any penalty falling on him if he married the girl who raped her.
* In the “crime of adultery”
Sex outside the marital framework is still a criminal offense in the laws of the Arab countries, which stipulates that adultery is considered a punishable crime. It distinguishes in the penalty between the married women that the punishment for adultery falls on her, whether inside or outside the marital home, while the married man is not punished if he commits adultery outside the marital home. The length of the prison sentence varies between the adulterer man and the adulterer woman in most Arab countries except in Iraq and the Arab Maghreb countries.
* A crime “under the pretext of honor”
It remains one of the most serious manifestations of inequality in Arab societies; it is a crime “under the pretext of honor”. In the Penal Code, laws such as Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, and Iraqi law allow for a reduction of the penalty for a man who commits a murder offense against a woman who is a member of his family, on the pretext of preserving the family’s reputation and inherited status. The law reduces the penalty for a man on the pretext that he found his relative in a situation that made him enter into “an outburst of anger.”
After reviewing the reservations made by the Arab States acceding to the Convention, it should be noted that these reservations were based on two pretexts: First, “the reserved articles are opposed to the provisions of Islamic law, and second “violation of these articles to the provisions of national laws”.