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Africa News afrol News
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Africa News afrol News
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afrol.com, 10 October 2000 - Moroccan representative Aicha Afifi yesterday told the UN Committee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural issues that deeply rooted practices still deprived women of their rights in many countries of the world. Women living in deeply indebted countries were at a disadvantage in fighting such impediments to women's rights, she said. Countries far poorer than Morocco, however, have been able to change the situation of women's right, when there has been a will to it, studies show. Aicha Afifi claimed that the Moroccan Government had made significant progress on women's rights, while local women's groups complain of unequal treatment, particularly under the laws governing marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Morocco had actively participated in preparations for the special session, in line with the importance it placed on the issue of women's rights, she said. The King himself had affirmed that issue's priority during his very first speech from the throne in 1999. Women living in deeply indebted countries were at a disadvantage in fighting such impediments to women's rights, Afifi concluded. Though Morocco is relatively poor in a North-African context, women's rights are significantly more respected in the most "deeply indebted countries" Afifi refers to. In Mauritania, for example (were GDP per capita is less than the half) an active and sincere government has worked to promote women's rights, and has achieved great successes with small resources. Moroccan women's groups, on the other hand, complain over little will by the government to change the situation. The Constitution in both countries guarantees the equal rights of women, but except for the preferences of individual factors such as social status in Mauritania, the equality of women generally is respected in Mauritania. In Morocco, on the other hand, women's right are not respected by the government when it comes to obtain education, inheritance or professional positions. Contrasting this, Mauritanian law even provides that men and women receive equal pay for equal work and the government seeks to open new employment opportunities for women in areas that traditionally were filled by men. The most serious differences between the two Muslim countries Morocco and Mauritania are the laws and law practices concerning marriage. In Mauritania, arranged marriages are increasingly rare, while they remain the norm in Morocco. In accordance with Shari' a, applied in both countries, marriage and divorce do not require the woman's consent. In Mauritania however, women frequently initiate the termination of a marriage and an increasing re-marriage rate for women indicates that this is getting more and more socially acceptable. In Morocco, on the other hand, a woman seeking a divorce has few practical alternatives. She may offer her husband money to agree to a divorce (known as a khol'a divorce). The difficulties for women seeking divorce in Morocco becomes specially grave when seen on the background that domestic violence is a common feature. In Mauritania, human rights monitors and female lawyers report that physical mistreatment of women by their husbands is rare. Meanwhile, Aicha Afifi claims, in UN forums, that "mindful of the need to promote the rights of women at both the national and international levels, Morocco had combined legislative and legal approaches to incorporate international instruments into its national policies and programmes." - It had strengthened its national institutions and established a commission for women whose participants included ministers and non-governmental organizations, Afifi claims. Her country's firm political will to advance women's rights "had manifested itself in numerous ways." It cooperated with agencies, gathered data and conducted studies, such as one on women in politics and another on the image of women in the media. Sources:
Based on US govt. and UN
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