Status of Women's Freedom in the Middle East

Findings of Freedom House Survey

An award from the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative has enabled Freedom House to complete a comprehensive survey of the barriers to women's full participation in society. The survey, which can be accessed through the MEPI website (www.mepi.state.gov), is the first-ever comparative assessment on the status of women in the Middle East and North Africa.

Notwithstanding important country differences and some key breakthroughs in gender equality in legal rights and increased access to education, the survey reveals a substantial deficit in women's rights throughout the 16 countries and Palestinian territories where the survey was conducted.

The report, "Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Citizenship and Justice," is the culmination of an intensive 20-month-long research process by a team of 40 leading scholars, analysts, and women's rights experts primarily from the region. The survey features country reports and country numerical ratings and focus group research.

The research team discovered that in most countries women are at a profound disadvantage in practically every institution of society:
the criminal justice system, the economy, education, health care, and the media.

Discriminatory laws and inadequate enforcement of existing laws intended to guarantee equality and fair treatment exacerbate the systematic gender gap. The study reveals gender inequality in the region is compounded by apathetic governments and patriarchal traditions, all of which undermine women's empowerment, leaving many of them unaware of their rights and ill-equipped to advocate for them.

The survey's major recommendations include equal legal status for women and revised family laws, increased spending for and access to education, and removal of social and legal obstacles to women's political and economic participation.

It is hoped that this survey will serve as a catalyst for both regional and international efforts to empower women in the Middle East and North Africa.

Freedom House is an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom. Freedom House functions as a catalyst for freedom through its analysis, advocacy, and action.

The Middle East Partnership Initiative is a Presidential initiative that supports economic, political, and educational reform efforts in the Middle East and expanded opportunity for all people of the region, especially women and youth.

More information can be found online at: www.mepi.state.gov.

Findings of Freedom House Survey
Report on Iraq from Section: Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person

....religious clerics who used the Friday sermon and street pamphlets to warn women that they would be maimed or killed if they worked for the "military occupiers and " Several women were, in fact, targeted and murdered en route to work in the Green Zone or to a military base.

Domestic violence does occur, but there are no published statistics on its prevalence.

The stigma attached to rape and domestic violence in Iraq, and the fear of retaliatory violence by male family members, prevents an over whelming majority of women from reporting these incidents or seeking legal redress.

In spring of 2003, the CPA, along with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, announced plans to open a shelter in Baghdad for female victims of domestic violence; a few shelters already exist in the Kurdish region that were established by Kurdish NGOs.

Recomendations

1. The United Nations and other international groups should provide immediate training and financial support to local Iraqi women’s NGOs to create awareness of protections for women against violence, to establish shelters, and to provide counseling and support services to
victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse.
2. The Iraqi Ministry of Justice should institute a standing Committee of Experts,comprised of legal experts who specialize in women’s human rights, to safeguard the rights of women in the Personal Status Law of Iraq.
3. The international community should provide technical assistanceto the Iraqi government to assist in the drafting of a law that protects women from all forms of violence, including domestic violence
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THERE IS A PROGRAM AT THE UNITED NATIONS THAT HAS BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND THAT MONEY IS BEING WASTED.
WHY THROW GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD?????

Like the oil for food scandal I think we need the media to investigate the use of these funds. Is this money being used to actually protect women from domestic violence by developing women's security protected villages and businesses, (battered women's shelters)? What security is being used?

Seven million dollars spent by the UN trust fund to eliminate violence against women AND NOT ONE SHELTER or protected transitional housing built that I can see from their web site.

This really should be investigated. The U.S., who is allegedly trying to do the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq, deserves an accounting of the effectiveness of the seven million in protecting women from gender violence and expanding their rights.

Just as the UN oil for food program was mismanaged so may be this program be mismanaged or unfocused. Perhaps we could put our share of that money to work for us in our own building projects.

If there is UN money to use for PROTECTED abused women's sheltered villages, we should use it and build them.

If there is a lack of effectiveness and we can change that, we ought to help the UN Fund focus on shelter villages (from which the the new emphasis in gender neutral peace keeper training should emerge in all women's militias).

It has been shown conclusively in the US that only shelters can protect women, children and their animals from the violence of the patriarchy. That their peace keepers were raping African children illustrates the actuality of a low level in the standard for women's rights at the UN and in its policies. Why, in light of that alarm signal, isn't there more interest in what is happening to the money for women and children in the rest of their programs? Only when they are protected from violence can women gain equal rights in a civil society.

Transitional housing, "green zones" protected with security measures and the support of the state legal and judiciary is absolutely critical to the success of any democracy. A woman's police unit can be developed to protect the shelters. Democracy is not mob rule but a system of checks and balances wherein the rights of the minority are also guaranteed and protected. Women are the Model for the democracy's success in protecting minority rights. Women are the canary in the democracy coal mine.

In protecting women and children there will be the time and necessity to heal and to train them to be self-sufficient. In doing that the government will be motivated to create a society where this population can utilize that training, be employed and self sufficient. So incentives work to keep the government interested in promoting women's rights. The interests of the oppressed are aligned with the interests of the government. Both want the target population to be educated, secure and self sufficient. NGO financial accountability is expected.

I did notice on the UN web site that they did, in Siberia, give some funds to a group that built a shelter butI think the UN did not build the shelter or protect it. If the UN did, I would like to see some detailed accounting of this and similar projects they may have funded.

I would like the media to investigate where the 7 million went from the UN trust fund to eliminate violence against women. I am interested because I have been trying to get The US State Dept, Office of Women's Initiatives to incorporate Shelter Villages into the regional women's centers the US is building in Afghanistan. I warned the Office of Womens Initiatives that if they do not begin building the abused women and children shelters our enemies will.