Region

• Arab Development and Women's Role. [Dar Al-Hayat, Lebanon] The fourth Arab Human Development Report is part of a series of reports issued by the United Nations Development Program and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development since 2002. The two organizations were joined by the Arab Gulf Program for United Nations Development Organizations since the third issue of the report series, which have been compiled and researched by independent Arab authors and advisors with diverse intellectual and cultural affiliations. According to the UNDP regional manger, this means that the reports are genuinely Arab in terms of aspirations, compilation, and ownership. Each of these reports dealt with a specific humanitarian development issue. The first report consisted of comprehensive and elemental treatments for the Arab humanitarian development, while the second focused on examining obstacles to the acquirement of knowledge, and the third consisted of an in-depth study of the phenomenon of the lack of freedom and good governance, seen as among the most critical and controversial topics in Arab States.

• Questions of Identity. [Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt] The Arab Report of Human Development (AHDR) has always been accorded a controversial, more often than not unfriendly, reception, a result of general Arab suspicion of the West, as symbolized by the UN and those domestic agencies affiliated to and funded by it. Some consider the act of monitoring itself an aggression against national sovereignty while others consider the UN to be no longer reliable or trusted. Yet others consider the socially concerned UN bodies (UNIFEM, UNISEF, UNDP, etc...) whose methodology informs the report to be dominated by radical feminist figures whose repulsive language excludes all "others" and imposes alien visions, challenging Arabic value system and identity. An impartial reading of the Arab Report of Human Development 2005, however, reveals some positive steps towards a greater recognition, and mutual understanding, of others. For the first time the report suggests all voices should be heard and trends represented. It belatedly acknowledges the multiplicity of Islamic discourses and differentiates between those radical and moderate groups that understand Islamic issues, including issues relating to women. Appreciating the positive aspects of the report should not, however, keep us from raising some questions about facts referred to in the text. The report claims that women in the Arab world are not realizing their full potential and are still denied equality of opportunity. Much of Arab society, though realizing the importance of women's advancement, are worried by characterizations such as that made by the writer of the Time magazine article "What's holding back Arab women?" "A long-awaited report," says the article, "paints a devastating picture that shows that the plight of Arab women extends far beyond debates over the veil."

• Shaikha Sabeeka Tells Saudi Hia Magazine About Arab Women’s Status. [Bahrain News Agency, Bahrain] Wife of his Majesty King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, Shaikha Sabeeka bint Ibrahim al Khalifa, Supreme Council for Women (SCW) chairwoman, affirmed that Bahraini women reaped the fruits of their efforts that have begun in the twenties of the last century. They have done this by scoring more achievements during 2006. Mainly, the appointment of Shaikha haya bin Rashid al Khalifa as UN General Assembly President, the appointment of two women as health and social development ministers and also the appointment of 10 female Shura council members, she said. Shaikha Sabeeka was speaking in an interview published in this month’s edition of Saudi magazine ‘Hia’ by its editing director Mai Bader coinciding with the Arab Women Day celebrations of February 1. Shaikha Sabeeka valued the government’s stance in supporting women on all levels and affirmed that she believed that women are a competent partner in the growth and development of a country.

• 'Women Have Equal Rights in Islam and Can Be Rulers'. [Gulf News, UAE] Egypt's top cleric denied a press report that quoted him as saying Islam forbids women from becoming heads of state, and declared that women can be presidents of countries. The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr Ali Gomaa, refuted press reports claiming he issued a fatwa barring women from political leadership. "Women have equal political rights in Islam," he said in a press statement issued. On January 27, the flagship state-owned daily Al Ahram carried a fatwa by Shaikh Gomaa saying that Islam forbids women from becoming heads of state because it would require them to lead prayer - something only a man can do. "This ruling does not refer to the head of a modern state but to the traditional role of Caliph as both secular head of state and imam of the Muslims," he said, referring to a position that was abolished with the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1924. "The head of state in a contemporary Muslim society, be he a president, prime minister or king, is no longer required or expected to lead Muslims in prayer. Therefore, it is permissible for women to hold the highest office in modern Muslim nations," he added.

• Scandalous by All Standards. [Jordan Times] The attempt by lawyers in Egypt to bar a female judge from occupying a post in the prosecutor general's office in Cairo because she is a woman is scandalous by all standards. The lawyers said that a woman cannot fill such a position because her "feeble" body cannot cope with the rigors of investigations under difficult physical conditions. If women can be heads of state or prime ministers, as is indeed the case in many countries, if they can serve in the military, be astronauts, climb mountains, ski down dangerous slopes and be lawyers or physicians, surely they can be public prosecutors. As a matter of fact, almost half of the prosecutors in Western countries are women. Prejudices against women in our region have to change. Competition between genders should be conducted on a fair basis, not on the strength of discrimination that belongs in the Dark Ages.

• Women Panel Refutes SP Leader Charges. [Hindustan Times, India] The spat between Samajwadi Party general secretary Beni Prasad Verma and Labor Minister Dr Waqar Ahmad Shah in Bahraich took a curious turn with State Women Commission chairperson Dr Ranjana Bajpai rubbishing Verma’s charges of sexual harassment of a SP leader Gudia Pathak by a police officer close to the minister. Verma had last week accused Dr Shah of shielding an additional SP of Bahraich Hiralal who had allegedly raped Gudia Pathak. Verma had produced the woman before media to substantiate his charge against the minister. However the woman commission, which probed into the charges, found that the allegations were baseless. Dr Bajpai told newsmen in Faizabad that commission member Shahin Fatima investigated the matter and found the charges were false and baseless. Dr Bajpai said how could a woman like Gudia could be silent after repeated rapes. Dr Bajpai said such women could not tolerate sexual harassment. Without taking name of Verma, the commission chairperson said, “some people have been unnecessarily making it an issue”. She said the issue should not be stretched after the commission’s findings.

• Women Get a Raw Deal in Uttarakhand. [NDTV.com, India] Seven from the BJP, six from the Congress and three from the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal. That is the total number of women who have been given tickets by political parties from among the 70 Assembly constituencies. That too in a state where women have spearheaded almost every noteworthy environmental and social movement. Renu Bist is one of the six lucky women to have got a ticket from the Congress but she feels there's no substitute for hard work. "Being a woman Sonia Gandhi too would definitely like to give more tickets to women worker, but it is necessary to win seats so that we can form the government, so I would advice all women to work hard for their ticket," said Renu Bist, Congress candidate, Yumkeshwar Block.

• India Tribal Group Offers Cash to Women With More Than 12 Kids. [FOX News] Tribal leaders in northeastern India are trying to create an incentive to have a big family. In the past two months, leaders have paid the equivalent of $348 to four women who have more than a dozen children. One of the women to have been paid has 17. The move was made because tribal elders became concerned that they would become outnumbered by settlers from elsewhere. But the decision has infuriated many women and health activists, who argue that no one should keep having children unless they can provide for them as well.

• Ministry for Certification of Marriage to NRIs. [Peninsula On-line, Qatar] The authorities here seem quite serious about protecting Indian women who marry non-resident Indians. While the Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi, has suggested that India might join the Hague Conference on Private International Law, his ministry is pushing for a mandatory certification of marriage on the wife’s passport. The Ministry of Women and Child Welfare and the National Council for Women are also at the forefront of this and other initiatives that aim to check the alarmingly high figures of Indian women being deserted, exploited or ill-treated by NRI grooms. The Overseas Indian Affairs Ministry has received complaints from about 30,000 women who have either been deserted after marriage or been cheated by the groom’s families. Rough statistics indicate that of every 10 NRI marriages in India, two are a sham. A substantial number of Indian marriages are not registered and therefore do not have legal sanctity. This makes it easy for NRIs to desert or abandon their wives or withhold alimony on the pretext that the marriage is not legal. Officials say an increasing number of complaints were received from states like Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala of girls being abandoned or cheated by their NRI husbands.

• Safe Rides: Female Fares Only. [Hindu, India] The taxi driver who tried to molest passenger Marzieh Khatoon Shariati did not know what he was setting off. Assuming her to be easy prey as she traveled with her infant son in the back of his cab, he pulled up at an isolated spot and suggested things other than travel. Instead, he was overpowered as Ms. Shariati, deploying skills honed as a karate instructor, put him in a stranglehold and ordered him to drive on. The experience inspired Ms. Shariati, 48, to become one of Iran's first woman taxi drivers in a pioneering scheme allowing women entry to an exclusively male preserve, while paradoxically reinforcing the country's official bias towards gender segregation. She is one of 20 full-time women drivers recruited for a new service dedicated to female passengers. Taxi Bisim Banovan (Ladies' Wireless Taxi) has been formed to provide a safe environment for female travelers in Tehran, where an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 women use private cabs each day. No male passengers are allowed and only female job applicants are accepted. Preference goes to those who are married or are family breadwinners. The telephone operators are all women, some of them multilingual to cater for foreign passengers.

• Call for Immediate Investments in Universal Access to Female Condoms. [SpiritIndia, India] The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) called on UN agencies, major foundations and bilateral aid programs such as PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, to immediately increase funding for the procurement and distribution of female condoms in countries heavily affected by HIV/AIDS, as well as funding for programs that raise public awareness of female condoms and provide education on their use.

• HLL Indian Consumer Promotion of Female Condom Expanded in India. [Yahoo! News] The Female Health Company (OTC Bulletin Board: FHCO—News) announced that its partner in India, Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL) has expanded its promotion of the Female Condom to consumers in three additional cities under the brand name Confidom. Earlier HLL had launched the Female Condom to consumers in the three cities of Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. It has now been launched in New Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, for a total of six cities that have an aggregate population of approximately 67 million people. HLL plans to launch in a total of 34 cities over time. As previously announced, the Company expects a third FC2 production line, developed with HLL at Kochi in India, to be operational by the end of the second quarter. FC2 is the Company's second-generation Female Condom product, which is currently being manufactured on two production lines in Malaysia.

• Challenging the Mullahs, A Signature at a Time. [The New York Times] 'Well-behaved women rarely make history," my favorite bumper sticker says. It surely applies to Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner whose relentless campaign against discrimination has enraged the mullahs for more than 25 years. In a country where the law values a woman's life at only half the price of a man's, Ebadi will not be quiet, and she is urging other women to find their voices. Her newest effort is to help collect the signatures of one million Iranian women on a petition protesting their lack of legal rights. The concept is simple and revolutionary, melding education, consciousness-raising and peaceful protest. Starting last year, women armed with petitions began to go to wherever other women gathered: schools, hair salons, doctors' offices and private homes. Every woman is asked to sign. But whatever a woman decides, she receives a leaflet explaining how Iran's interpretation of Islamic law denies women full rights. The material explains how Iran's divorce law makes it easy for men, and incredibly difficult for women, to leave a marriage, and how custody laws give divorced fathers sole rights to children above the age of 7.

• Record Female Dominance At Premeds. [Radio Javan] According to ISNA, the number of female students admitted to Iranian medical schools is now twice the number of male students (67% of total). Female students admitted to Iranian universities had outnumbered male students a few years ago, and the proportion is still increasing in favor of female students. The resulting sociological changes have raised questions and concerns among some Iranian groups.

• Knesset Parley to Debate Pros, Cons of IDF Service for Religious Women. [Jerusalem Post, Israel] Rabbis will rub elbows with religious women soldiers, many of them high-ranking officers, at a Knesset conference Wednesday aimed at discussing what in most religious circles is considered taboo - army service for women. The conference was organized by MK Rabbi Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad). Chief Rabbi of Haifa, She'ar Yishuv Hacohen, who plans to attend, said that army service for women should not be a recommended first choice. "But if a religious girl decides to enlist, the IDF should allow her to do so on a voluntary basis," said Hacohen. "That way if she changes her mind in the middle of service she can quit." Hacohen said that according to Halacha, a girl is not permitted to leave the custody of her mother and father. Enlisting in the IDF entails the parents' forfeiting of custody over their child, said Hacohen. Therefore, the vast majority of rabbis oppose army service. Despite rabbinic opposition, at least three post-high school educational institutions prepare religious women for army service.

• Hadassah Institute Hosts Women's Rights Expert. [Justice] Israeli women seeking to annul marriages are often at a disadvantage to their husbands, Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a women's-rights expert, said in her keynote address for the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's "Day of Learning on Women, Gender Equality and Jewish Law in Israel" at the Women's Study Research Center. As part of a project on gender, culture, religion and law, the day focused on the difficulty Jewish Israeli women face in obtaining divorces. Halperin-Kaddari, a member of the United Nations' Expert Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, said that in Israel, divorce is not a civil matter, but a religious one in which men must also give their consent for a divorce. A man seeking a divorce doesn't need the consent of his wife. "It is not an optimistic situation," Halperin-Kaddari said.

• Parliament Moves Ahead with Women's Rights Legislation. [JURIST] Kuwaiti draft legislation broadening women's rights was approved by a parliamentary panel and will likely be debated in the house in the next two months. The panel's head, MP Saleh Ashour [Kuwait Politics Database profile, in English and Arabic], revealed that the bill would make government housing, currently only offered to married men, available to women who are married to non-citizens, divorced or widowed. Other benefits include two-year maternity leave, a monthly stipend for unemployed mothers, and an increase in paid leave from 40 days to 70 days. If passed by parliament, the bill must then be signed by Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah [BBC profile] to go into effect.

• Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Bill Tabled in Pakistan. [Zee News, India] The ruling party in Pakistan tabled a bill in Parliament to stop forced marriages of women and protect their rights, including those of inheritance. President of ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain introduced the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Bill in the National Assembly to abolish certain tribal practices, including marrying women off by force to settle a feud between two families or clans. The bill also aims to provide women with equal social and economic opportunities and amend the Pakistan Penal Code of 1860 to give them more protection and ensure their dignity and respect in society. The bill will protect the rights of inheritance of women besides providing them with equal opportunities so that they can play their due role in the development and progress of the country and their own, Hussain said. A legislation last year to amend the controversial Islamic Hudood laws relating to rape and assault of women stirred a major agitation by Islamist parties. The legislation amended the Hudood Law that required the rape victim to establish the charge with four male witnesses. Introducing the bill, Hussain said the government under the leadership of President Pervez Musharraf is committed to emancipate the socio-economic condition of women and is taking unprecedented steps for their empowerment and ensuring equal rights for them.

• Shujaat Seeks Fazl’s Help on Women’s Bill. [Daily Times, Pakistan] Pakistan Muslim League (PML) President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain met Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Secretary General Maulana Fazlur Rehman and sought his support for the Anti-Women Practices Bill in the National Assembly (NA). The meeting was held at the residence of Maulana Fazl in the Parliament Lodges, and the two leaders discussed the political situation in the country and the bill. Sources told Daily Times that Shujaat told Fazl that the new women’s bill presented in the NA was aimed at ending discriminatory customs against women and the MMA should support the government on this issue. They added that Shujaat also urged the MMA to participate in the select committee announced by NA Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain to discuss the bill.

• Pakistan: Honor Killings of Women and Girls. [Amnesty International] Women in Pakistan live in fear. They face death by shooting, burning or killing with axes if they are deemed to have brought shame on the family. They are killed for supposed 'illicit' relationships, for marrying men of their choice, for divorcing abusive husbands. They are even murdered by their kin if they are raped as they are thereby deemed to have brought shame on their family. The truth of the suspicion does not matter -- merely the allegation is enough to bring dishonor on the family and therefore justifies the slaying. The lives of millions of women in Pakistan are circumscribed by traditions that enforce extreme seclusion and submission to men. Male relatives virtually own them and punish contraventions of their proprietary control with violence. For the most part, women bear traditional male control over every aspect of their bodies, speech and behavior with stoicism, as part of their fate, but exposure to media, the work of women's groups and a greater degree of mobility have seen the beginnings of women's rights awareness seep into the secluded world of women. But if women begin to assert their rights, however tentatively, the response is harsh and immediate: the curve of honor killings has risen parallel to the rise in awareness of rights. Every year hundreds of women are known to die as a result of honor killings. Many more cases go unreported and almost all go unpunished. The isolation and fear of women living under such threats are compounded by state indifference to and complicity in women's oppression. Police almost invariably take the man's side in honor killings or domestic murders, and rarely prosecute the killers. Even when the men are convicted, the judiciary ensures that they usually receive a light sentence, reinforcing the view that men can kill their female relatives with virtual impunity. Specific laws hamper redress as they discriminate against women.

• Two Women Declared Karis by Jirga Missing. [The News - International, Pakistan] Four days have passed since the disappearance of two women, Zahida and Farzana, but Khairpur police have not been able to trace out their whereabouts. A Jirga declared them Karis and sold them against Rs 75,000 in the presence of their husbands and parents. Sources told The News that Zahida and Farzana were in police custody but the police denied. They explained that police were rather conducting raids in the village of Jhampir of Pir-Jo-Goth and the village of Faiz Wah near Khairpur for the recovery of the women. However, citizens have complained against the indifferent attitude of the police. They said selling out of the women by a Jirga violated the Supreme Court ruling on the matter, according to which no parallel courts could be allowed in any part of the province. They demanded of the apex court to take suo motto action against the Jirga holders and ensure justice to the victimized women. They also demanded of the legislators to make strict laws against Jirgas. [Karis: women who can be killed -- stoned to death according to some reports -- for letting down the perceived family honor.]

• Female Students Clash with Pakistani Authorities. [Concord Monitor] Veiled in burqas and armed with bamboo canes, scores of female seminary students have occupied a children's library to protest plans to demolish mosques and madrassas built without permission on government land. The unusual protest has pitted Pakistan's government against the chief of one of the country's largest Islamic schools, long suspected of militant links. "The protest is their form of jihad (holy war). They started it on their own, and since we are sharing the same feeling, I have offered them support," said the chief cleric of the Lal Masjid mosque that runs the seminary, Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Ghazi, an outspoken critic of Pakistan's support of the United States, denied instigating the library protest, although he is the seminary's vice principal. His open support could rally thousands to the cause - as he has in the past for anti-government and anti-U.S. protests.

• Confrontation Likely Between Female Madrasa Students, Forces. [Zee News, India] A confrontation between security forces and hundreds of Burqa-clad female Madrasa students occupying a library here appeared imminent as talks between their leaders and the government broke down. As hundreds of male and female paramilitary commandoes were mobilized for a possible raid on the library located between a mosque and a Madrasa in the heart of the city, Masjid Hafsa's deputy chief Ghazi Abdul Rashid told media this evening that the seminary's management will not call off the occupation of the children's library or hold talks with the government to end the standoff. Some 200 women occupied the library on January 21 to protest the demolition of two unauthorized mosques. Rashid, who heads the management of the nearby mosque known for practicing militant Islamic ideology, said any talks with the government were of no value as is not honoring its commitments.

• Protesting Female Students Refuse to End 2-Week Old School Protest. [International Herald Tribune, France] Hundreds of female students who have occupied a library for two weeks in Pakistan's capital again refused police and government demands to leave, raising fears of a violent confrontation. About 200 female students — some brandishing wooden batons — began a sit-in at the government-run children's library in late January to protest the demolition of two mosques in Islamabad by municipal authorities, and fearing their own seminary could be razed because it encroaches on state land. The women say they will not leave until the mosques are rebuilt, and have also demanded an official apology. Since the students began their sit-in, government and police officials have held talks with administrators of the Jamia Hasfa madrassa to vacate the library without using force, but have failed to reach a compromise. The conflict has raised doubts about whether the government has the power to control the more than 13,500 religious schools in the country.

• Women Resisting the State. [The News - International, Pakistan] Last week was an interesting one for the women's movement in the country. Two main events sparked resistance strategy by women activists from across the diverse spectrum of the movement. The protest by female students of Jamia Hafsa against the demolition of two Islamabad mosques and their subsequent takeover of a children's library reached a crescendo. Simultaneously, a Karachi-based protest by liberal women against the gang rape of Naseema from interior Sindh was held in front of the Karachi Press Club. This continued the next day with a long, confrontational sit-in at the heavily policed Governor House. The matrix of identities that build up the women's movement played themselves out in these two events because at the centre of the dispute is the state and the conflict it embodies. Peripheral then are other identities of religion, ethnicity, class and patriarchal trends within movement politics.

• Authorities in Islamabad Have Acceded to Protesting Female Students. [E Canada Now, Canada] Authorities in the Pakistani capital have acceded to the demands of protesting girl students barricaded into a religious school and library and ordered the reconstruction of a mosque that was demolished last month, officials said. Dialogue between the government and more than 200 protesting students brought a breakthrough when Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq laid the first brick at the site of the old mosque after accepting the demands, his personal secretary said. “The mosque issue has been resolved,” Iqbal Siddiqui told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, adding that an earlier ruling that the mosque was illegally located on public ground had been quashed. The dispute flared three weeks ago when city development authorities pulled down two mosques for alleged breach of green belt regulations and listed several more for demolition. But despite the apparent official change of heart, the girls, all of them veiled and brandishing sticks, continued to occupy a children’s library by their madrassa seminary. Children were still able to visit the building, but the protesters have said they will only vacate it when they receive firm guarantees that the mosques and madrassas that were deemed illegal will not be touched.

• Call to Provide Better Facilities to Working Women. [Daily Times, Pakistan] seminar on Women’s Employment Concerns and Working Conditions held at the Parliament Lodges stressed the need for providing better facilities to working women. Dr Syed Tauqir Shah, the adviser on bonded labor and national project coordinator of International Labor Organization (ILO), advocated the women’s right to come out and work without facing hostile attitude from men. He said it was a smart business to have women in a leadership role. The ILO, he said, wanted supportive working environment for women. He pointed out that the main factor contributing to occupational sex segregation were cultural and social attitudes towards what constitutes a ‘male’ or ‘female’ job and gender inequality in education and training. These result in both sexes being streamed into different professions. MNA Riffat Javed highlighted the discriminatory attitude of men towards women. She said mindsets needed to change within fathers, brothers, husbands and fathers in law. “Women have to face dirty looks of men be it the bus stop or office.” MNA Mehanaz Rafi spoke of problems of women living below the poverty line. “According to an estimate 50 million people were earning through home-based industries and 80% of them were women; they get almost no profit for things they make.”

• The Inner World of Female Suicide Bombers. [Christian Broadcasting Network] On January 28, 2002, Wafa Idris walked down one of the busiest streets in Jerusalem and blew herself up. While Idris wasn't the first female suicide bomber in history, she was the first one in Israel. One man died and more than 100 were wounded in her attack. Suddenly, the Palestinian uprising called the "intifada" took on a new and even more sinister terror twist. Sadly, many other females followed Idris into the deadly world of the "human bomb." Few people know this inner world of female suicide bombers like Anat Berko. Berko is the author of "The Path to Paradise: The Inner World of Suicide Bombers and Their Dispatchers." It offers a rare view into a new phenomenon in the world today, women being used as "human bombs." While Israel has borne the brunt of this phenomenon for the past several years, it's a threat that reaches far beyond Israel's borders. It threatens our fragile global security, especially in the West, where we can be more deferential toward women. Berko has met face-to-face with dozens of female and male suicide bombers who set out to kill but, for a variety of reasons, never consummated their deadly mission. Berko served as a lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army, holds a Ph.D. in criminology, and is now a research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism.

Turkey

• Women's Rights: MEPs Say Improvements Still Needed. [European Parliament, EU] Turkey's legal framework on women's rights "has in general been satisfactory, but its substantive implementation remains flawed", says the European Parliament in its second report on women's role in social, economic and political life in Turkey. The report emphasizes that respecting human rights, including women’s rights, is a condition sine qua non for Turkey's membership of the EU. The own-initiative report by Emine Bozkurt (PES, NL) and adopted with 522 votes in favor, 15 against and 53 abstentions, which follows up Parliament's July 2005 resolution on women's role in Turkey, highlights key areas of concern. It welcomes the start of active EU accession negotiations with Turkey, but "regrets the slowing down of the reform process in Turkey over the last year and the persistent problem with women's rights" and reiterates Parliament's call for "full and effective implementation of the Community acquis in the field of women's rights, particularly in the poorer regions of the country."

• Women Seek King’s Intervention in Fatima Case. [Arab News, Saudi Arabia] Fearing for the future of the rights of Saudi women that are slowly being taken away from them in the name of Shariah after an appeals court upheld the forceful divorce of Fatima and Mansour, a group of Saudi women from across the Kingdom have launched a petition to be presented to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. The petition urges the king to allow Fatima’s case to be sent back to court and to disregard the divorce ruling so that the family can be reunited. The petition also calls for guidelines to ensure rejection of divorce cases that are taken to court by parties other than husband and wife. The plight of Fatima, 34, has been highly publicized and attracted the sympathy of the Saudi public since details of the case first appeared last year. Fatima’s half-brother contends that Mansour misled the family about his tribal background to win the family’s consent to marry his sister. Shariah law (Islamic law) does not prohibit a woman from marrying a man of a different tribal background and therefore according to Islamic law, which is the law of the Kingdom, Fatima’s marriage was perfectly legal.

• We Need a Women’s Legal Committee. [Arab News, Saudi Arabia] Saudi women have many legal problems, some of them related to family issues. In all cases, they need to deal with government agencies, security and legal bodies for follow up action and to guarantee their rights. Most of the time the woman is alone and needs someone to support her case — whether another woman or an official agency. And because there are no places for a woman to seek refuge, especially when she doesn’t have a male offspring, brother, husband or father to help, she relies on media outlets to reach out to the people hoping this will help her find legal redress. Lately there has been a series of television programs that deal with sensitive social issues and tackle them boldly. To increase their viewing such programs compete with one another by choosing hosts or hostesses who ask searching questions to unearth hidden information from a guest or a government official. Also, these programs try to tackle the problems with a transparency that the Saudi community isn’t used to. This has added to their popularity. Ours is a conservative community that finds it hard to discuss its private problems openly. But when there’s an attempt to help and an assurance that personal information will be kept confidential, people will be encouraged to speak out believing that someone is there to help.

• UAE Names Eight Women to Advisory Council. [Washington Post] United Arab Emirates leaders have named eight women to a 40-seat advisory council, in addition to one female member elected in the Gulf state's first elections in December, the state news agency WAM said. The eight women were among 20 members of Federal National Council (FNC), nominated by rulers of the Gulf emirates that make up the UAE federation. The rest of the body, which has no legislative powers, were elected in the polls in which under 1% of the native population was allowed to vote. The appointments put the FNC's female membership at 22.5%, more that twice the average of 9.3% in Arab countries, according to the world Inter-Parliamentary Union, but lower than Iraq's 25.5% and Tunisia's 22.8%. Women were allowed to both vote and run in the UAE though there was no quota to ensure a minimum number entered the FNC.

• Female Travelers Continue to Face Train Harassment. [Gulf News, UAE] Railway Police has stepped up security in the ladies compartments of suburban trains but women say criminals are continuing to harass and attack them. There has been a further two attacks this week on women commuters traveling at night and these incidents have once again triggered a fear complex among female travelers. In the first incident a 27-year-old woman was robbed of her mobile on a suburban train at Curry Road Station while on her way home.

• Uzbek Police Release Wife of Opposition Activist Who Intends to Run for President. [North County Times] Police released the wife of an opposition figure after holding her for several hours and warning that her husband should drop his plans to run for president, a rights activist said. Jahongir Shosalimov, who intends to challenge President Islam Karimov in elections later this year, said several men who identified themselves as anti-terrorism officers had forcibly taken his wife, Gulcherkhra, from her home. She was released later in the evening after being told that her husband "should stop doing that because it agitates public," said Surat Ikramov, a human rights advocate. Activists said the woman was held at a police station. Police have refused to comment on the allegations.