Women’s Rights in the Middle East & North Africa
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: January 29, 2006
FREEDOM HOUSE
Women’s Rights in the Middle East & North Africa
http://65.110.85.181/template.cfm?page=148
Syria
by Catherine Bellafronto
Population: 17,500,000
GDP Per
Capita (PPP):
$3,620
Economy: Mixed statist
Ranking on UN HDI: 106 out of 177
Polity: Dominant party
(military-dominated)
Literacy: Male 91.0% / Female 74.2%
Percent Women
Economically Active: 29.2%
Date of Women’s Suffrage: 1949 (to vote), 1953
(restrictions lifted)
Women’s Fertility Rate: 3.8
Percent Urban/Rural: Urban 50% /
Rural 50%
Country Ratings for Syria
Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice:
2.7
Autonomy,
Security, and Freedom of the Person:
2.2
Economic
Rights and Equal Opportunity:
2.8
Political
Rights and Civic Voice:
2.2
Social and
Cultural Rights:
2.3
(Scale of 1 to 5: 1 represents the lowest and 5
the highest level of freedom women have to exercise their
rights)
Introduction
Syria gained its independence from France in 1946 and
today is a republic under a military regime. In 1963, the Ba’ath Party led a
successful military coup and has since governed Syria with a pan-Arab,
nationalist, secular, and socialist ideology that infiltrates all aspects of
public life. Syrians do not have the right to change their government. The
Syrian constitution, ratified in 1973, guarantees the Ba’ath Party’s dominance
in the People’s Assembly–Syria’s parliament–by reserving assembly seats for
members of the Ba’ath Party and the National Progressive Front (NPF), the
umbrella group of Syrian parties of which the Ba’ath Party is the legal head.
The People’s Assembly nominates the president, whose candidacy is then approved
by a popular referendum. Current President Bashar Al-Asad and his father, Hafiz
Al-Asad, who served as president for 30 years before his death in 2000, have run
unopposed in all elections.
Syria is a middle-income developing country with a per
capita GDP (PPP) of $3,620 and a Human Development Index rating of
0.710.[i] The centrally planned economy depends heavily on the
agricultural sector and on oil-related products and services. The public sector
is the primary source of jobs, employing 73 percent of the work force, but
unemployment rates near 20 percent are pressuring the government to focus on
private-sector growth.[ii] President Al-Asad is slowly instituting market-oriented
reforms, but members of the regime’s “old guard” are largely opposed to them.
Half of Syria’s estimated 17.5 million residents live in
rural areas. The population is 90 percent Arab; there is also a sizable Kurdish
population (approximately 1.5 million people), as well as other ethnic minority
groups, including 409,662 Palestinian refugees.[iii] While
the Syrian constitution requires the president to be a Muslim, Syria has no
official religion. A majority of Syrians (74 percent) are Sunni Muslim. The
country is also home to other Muslim groups, and various sects of Christians
(about 10 percent), as well as a small number of Jews. The Alawites, an offshoot
sect of Islam, comprise about 12 percent of the population and dominate the
Ba’ath Party, the executive, and the security branches of the government.
A state of emergency, imposed by the government the year
the Ba’ath Party took power, remains in effect today.[iv] Since
its inception, the government and security agencies have used the state of
emergency to curtail all civil society activity and suspend constitutional
rights to expression, peaceful assembly, and privacy, resulting in a pervasive
atmosphere of fear that has only recently begun to subside.
Syrian women balance growing opportunities in the public
sphere with continuing social and legal restrictions in their private lives.
Government policies over the past 10 years have encouraged women’s education,
participation in the work force, and use of family-planning services. Reflecting
the government’s efforts, women’s literacy increased from 48 percent in 1990 to
74 percent in 2002; 29.2 percent of women are economically active; and 45.8
percent of married women now use contraception.[v]
Nevertheless, traditional values, discriminatory laws,
and an authoritarian government deprive women of many basic legal and social
rights. Syria’s penal code, nationality code, and personal status code establish
women’s status as legal dependents of their fathers and husbands, while
traditional ways of life reinforce patriarchal social structures. One of the
primary sources of opposition to women’s rights, however, lies in extremist
Muslim groups in Syrian society who strongly influence government decisions to
maintain women’s unequal status under the laws and the personal status code.
Syrian women’s groups have limited abilities to combat this opposition or to
effect social or legal change in women’s lives due to the government’s severe
restrictions on freedom of association.
Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice
The Syrian
constitution, ratified in 1973, delineates the same rights, freedoms, and
responsibilities for women as it does for men. Article 45 of the constitution
declares, “The state guarantees women all the opportunities that enable them to
participate fully and effectively in political, social, cultural, and economic
life. The state works to remove the restrictions that prevent women’s
development and their participation in building socialist Arab society.” Yet, no
laws protect women in the event of gender-based discrimination, and no formal
mechanisms exist through which women may complain to the government if they do
encounter discrimination.
The Syrian legal system derives from French civil law,
Turkish law, and Shari’a (Islamic
law). Although the constitution guarantees “full rights and opportunity” for all
citizens, exceptions exist in the nationality code, the personal status code,
and the penal code that do not afford women full and equal status as citizens.
The personal status code, the body of laws regulating family relationships and
inheritance, makes women legal dependents of their fathers or husbands and
denies women status as full legal adults in matters of marriage, child custody,
and divorce.
The nationality code of 1969 prevents a woman from
passing Syrian citizenship to her non-Syrian husband or to her children, a right
that is enjoyed by Syrian men.[vi] Furthermore, in 1962, about 120,000 Kurds were stripped
of their Syrian nationality. Along with their descendants, these Kurds remain
stateless, a total of 275,000 to 290,000 people, unable to obtain a passport or,
in many cases, any official identification documents.[vii] This
serves to disrupt numerous daily-life activities for both Kurdish men and
Kurdish women, such as the ability to travel, own property, attend school, and
obtain employment.
The Syrian judiciary is divided into secular and
religious courts and is constitutionally independent from the executive branch.
The secular courts are under the jurisdiction of the ministry of justice and
hear both civil and criminal cases. Separate religious courts serve different
religious groups concerning matters of personal status, family, and inheritance.
While spiritual courts handle marriage, divorce, and custody cases for Druze and
non-Muslims, the Shari’a court administers all other family law cases for Syrian
citizens.
In addition to these courts, two additional court systems
were created under emergency laws: the Supreme State Security Court, which hears
cases involving threats to political and national security, and the Economic
Security Court, which hears cases involving financial crimes. Neither male nor
female citizens prosecuted within this system enjoy constitutionally guaranteed
rights to a fair trial. Human rights organizations estimate that the Syrian
government is currently holding between 800 and 4,000 political prisoners, many
of whom were tried in the security courts.[viii]
Women are treated as full persons in the civil and
criminal court system. In the Shari’a court, however, a woman’s testimony is
considered to be worth only half that of a man. While there are no additional
legal barriers to women’s access to justice, social barriers prevent them from
taking advantage of the judicial system to the same extent as men. For example,
women are discouraged from presenting their claims in police stations, which are
largely staffed by male police officers, for fear of experiencing shame,
discomfort, or sexual harassment.[ix] The state of emergency, imposed by the government in
1963, further deprives both women and men of their constitutionally guaranteed
rights to justice.
The penal code of 1949 affords women special protections
from verbal and physical harassment and violence perpetrated by men, yet a
number of other laws deprive women of these protections, usually for the sake of
family “honor.” For example, Article 508 of the penal code states: “If there is
a contracted marriage between the man who commits rape, sexual abuse,
kidnapping, sexual harassment and the victim, then there is no charge or the
punishment is stopped.” Victims’ families may favor this option in order to
mitigate public scandal. Many women do not have the choice of refusing marriage
in such cases either due to family pressure or due to fear of further harassment
and social stigma.
The penal code condones violence against women. Marital
rape is not a crime in Syrian law, and women have no legal recourse should their
husband assault them.[x] Furthermore, a judge may legally reduce the sentence for
a man convicted of a so-called “honor crime,” —the murder or beating of or
causing injury to his wife or female family member for alleged sexual
misconduct.[xi]
Adultery is a crime in Syrian law, but the conditions
required for proving adultery in the court are different for men and women. In
presenting a case against his wife, a man may produce any form of
evidence—witnesses, physical proof, or written documents—before the judge. A
woman, in contrast, may only present written evidence of her husband’s
infidelity. Additionally, the husband must have committed the crime of adultery
inside the family home in order to be charged, while a woman may be prosecuted
for committing adultery anywhere.[xii] The
punishment for adultery is more severe for a woman than it is for a man. If
convicted of adultery, women may serve 3 months to 2 years in prison, while men
serve only 1 month to 1 year.[xiii]
Under the state of emergency, all Syrian citizens are
subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile. However, women’s lower rate of
participation in politically sensitive opposition activities makes them less
vulnerable to arbitrary detention or arrest. A woman threatened by family
members or the community for supposed connection with an “honor crime” may be
held by the authorities for her protection.
In 2003, the Syrian government ratified the UN Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), with
reservations applied to Articles 2, 9(2), 15(4), 16(1)(2), and 29(1).[xiv] The
government found these articles to be incompatible with national laws and the
Shari’a. Syria’s reservations predominantly concern a woman’s right to pass her
nationality to her children, freedom of movement and of residence and domicile,
equal rights and responsibilities during the marriage and its dissolution, and
the legal effect of the betrothal and the marriage of a child. Syria’s
reservations on Article 2 of the convention are most significant, as it is this
article that establishes the purpose of the convention and commits the state to
engage in efforts to eliminate discrimination against women. Syria has not yet
ratified the Optional Protocol to CEDAW.
A small number of Syrian women’s rights activists and
other civil society actors are currently working to improve women’s access to
justice and are advocating for legal reform. However, all nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) are required to be registered with the government, and all
meetings must be reported in advance to the ministry of interior.
The General Women’s Union (GWU) is the only registered
women’s rights group approved by the government. The GWU follows the Ba’ath
party mandate; its officials are appointed and promoted from within the party
hierarchy. Formed in 1967, the GWU is a nationwide organization that works on
women’s welfare and political participation issues in Syria. It receives
financial support from the government, which facilitates its development
projects involving women in all parts of the country, especially in rural areas.
According to the Private
Associations and Institutions Act No. 93 of 1958, and in line with Ba’ath
Party philosophy, the GWU represents all Syrian women.[xv] However, this assertion by the
government is used to prohibit independent women’s NGOs from registering. It
advises all women’s groups to work under the GWU. This presents serious problems
for independent women’s groups who may not agree with all government policies. A
number of women’s groups, such as the Syrian Women’s League, operating since
1949, do work independently, but their members still face the threat of
arrest and detention.
Independent women’s groups in Syria face tremendous
problems in raising and receiving funds to continue their work due to local laws
that prohibit donor grants from abroad. As a result, unregistered groups find it
difficult to attract members, funding, and participants for their activities.
Many activists work informally and independently at the grassroots level raising
awareness, publishing articles, giving interviews, and holding
forums.
Recommendations
1. The
government and People’s Assembly should lift the state of emergency that
prevents women from working openly and effectively to change discriminatory
laws.
2. The Syrian government, in cooperation with NGOs, should lead a
public campaign to inform women of their legal rights and encourage them to
access the judicial system.
3. The Syrian president and
People’s Assembly should amend laws related to “honor crimes” and adultery that
put women’s lives in danger.
4. The government should
remove all reservations to CEDAW and take steps to implement it locally by
bringing national laws in conformity with CEDAW.
Autonomy,
Security, and Freedom of the Person
While
the civil liberties, security, and autonomy of all Syrian citizens are
restricted, women suffer additional
restrictions both legally and socially. The personal status code, contained in
Legislative Decree No. 59 of 1983, regulates family relationships and
inheritance and is the single greatest legal barrier to Syrian women’s freedom.
It codifies legal discrimination against women and reinforces the discriminatory
traditions of a patriarchal society.
Syria does not have an official state religion. The
Syrian constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government
generally respects this right in practice. Most religious activities are free
from government involvement, although the government does monitor some religious
sermons. Syrian Muslim women face some additional restrictions and are not
allowed to marry non-Muslims, unlike Muslim men.[xvi]
Married women are subject to restrictions on their
freedom of movement. Syrian law gives a husband the right to prevent his wife
from leaving the country by submitting her name to the ministry of interior,
although men rarely exercise this right. A woman no longer needs the permission
of her husband to obtain a passport. Unmarried women over the age of 18 may
travel domestically and abroad without the permission of male guardians. Yet
social pressure restricts many women from traveling or living alone.
The Syrian marriage contract legally allows women to
stipulate any provisions in the marriage contract. However, in practice, most
Syrian women are unaware of this right and fail to exercise it. Marriage
contracts are generally prepared according to existing patriarchal traditions in
which the male family members negotiate the marriage contract for the bride and
the groom. Less-educated families rely on the advice of the male religious
leader who conducts the marriage ceremony. Women are rarely informed of all the
rights they could claim in a Muslim marriage contract and often sign without
reading it.
Women of all ages are required to have male guardians
contract their marriages, while adult men are free to contract their own
marriages.[xvii] If an adult woman marries without her guardian’s
consent, the guardian may invalidate her marriage.[xviii] The
minimum age for marriage is 17 for females and 18 for males. However, minimum
marriage-age laws are often not enforced, particularly in rural areas,[xix] and a
judge may authorize marriage for females as young as 13 and males at
15.[xx] Because the guardian contracts the marriage, minors are
not able to object to it. Early marriage remains a problem, although the average
age of marriage for women has risen consistently to 25.2 in urban areas and 24.8
in rural areas.[xxi]
Syrian laws governing behavior within marriage
discriminate against women. A woman must obey her husband or risk losing
financial support.[xxii] While polygamy is legally permitted, it is restricted
and relatively uncommon, though more prevalent in rural areas. According to
Article 17 of the personal status code, a husband must seek permission from a
judge to take a second wife and must prove he has both legitimate justification
and the financial means to provide for a second wife. A husband may circumvent
this restriction, however, if he obtains a civil marriage and later registers
the marriage outside the court system by providing medical proof of his second
wife’s pregnancy.[xxiii] Currently, a man’s marriage to a second wife is not a
legitimate reason for a woman to divorce him in the Syrian Shari’a
courts.
Divorce continues to be much easier for men to initiate
than for women and often leaves women unable to support themselves. Article 91
of the personal status code grants men the right to repudiation, the unilateral
decision to end the marriage without naming a reason; the man simply registers
the divorce with the government. In this case, a woman may receive alimony for
up to three years if she can prove she is destitute. Women who are employed,
however, often do not fall into this category and do not receive
alimony.
For a woman to obtain a divorce, she must sue, stating a
legitimate reason, specified as “dissension, prejudice, lack of affinity,
absence or ailments,” after which the court allows one month for
reconciliation.[xxiv] Alternatively, a woman can seek a consensual divorce, or
khol, in which she agrees to return
the dower (a sum of money given to a wife by her husband at the time of
marriage) to her husband.[xxv] In practice, however, many women choose to forgo alimony
from the spouse rather than repay him the dower.
Child custody laws allow a woman to be the legal guardian
of her children only in the event that the father has died or is legally
incapacitated, stateless, or unknown. A woman has the right to have and care for
her children until the age of 13 for boys and 15 for girls. Yet, while the
mother has the right to keep the children, she does not have the same rights as
a guardian. For example, she cannot register her children for school or move
with them. Furthermore, divorced mothers who remarry may lose custody of their
children, but this possibility does not apply to a father who remarries.
Trafficking laws exist and are enforced.[xxvi] Syria
also legally prohibits torture in the penal code.[xxvii]
Nevertheless, Amnesty International has criticized the Syrian government for
human rights abuses including torture. Syrian officials are legally protected
from prosecution for any crimes committed while on the job, leaving victims of
torture and their families with no avenue for redress.[xxviii]
Syria has no laws to protect women from domestic
violence. Patriarchal social customs tend to tolerate a man hitting his wife,
and women are often discouraged from reporting violence against themselves or
their children. Syrian police officials are not sympathetic to women victims of
family violence and lack gender-sensitive training to deal with such cases. A
woman’s family may intervene on her behalf by speaking to her abusive husband,
but families will rarely tolerate the public attention of a legal suit and will
most often encourage the woman to remain in the
marriage.
It is difficult to know the extent of violence against
women as there are no reliable statistics on the problem. Social custom
discourages families from reporting crimes, and crimes are often masked as
accidents. While women receive special legal protection from verbal and physical
violence outside the home,[xxix] they rarely, if ever, make use of these protections by
reporting the crime. Many women remain silent about abuse, feeling shame and
responsibility, because Syrian society places the burden of sexual morality on
women.[xxx]
Syrian women activists speak openly in the press about
the need to reform the personal status code, and women’s rights groups have
recently held conferences on combating domestic violence. Social discussion of
domestic violence is still generally circumspect, however, despite its presence
in the press and on television. No private or governmental organizations provide
assistance to victims of domestic violence, and information is most often passed
by word of mouth. Charitable religious organizations provide limited assistance
such as shelter, counseling, legal aid, health care services, and
rehabilitation.[xxxi] Nevertheless, due to the lack of government attention to
this issue, a large number of women victims of family violence do not have
access to supportive services.
Recommendations
1. The government should review all laws and eliminate
clauses that discriminate against women; it should bring its family law into
conformity with constitutional guarantees of equality.
2. The government should pass laws to protect women from
domestic violence and provide training to court and police officials on
effectively dealing with these cases.
3. The government should
work in close consultation with women’s rights advocates to establish support
centers for female victims of violence to receive legal aid, counseling, and
related protective services.
4. Media and NGOs should reach
out to families of victims of domestic violence in order to reduce the social
stigma of this problem and provide the families with information on how to help
the victim.
5.
Syria’s Central Bureau of Statistics should gather data on the prevalence,
causes, types, and outcomes of violence against women.
Economic
Rights and Equal Opportunity
The Syrian civil and commercial codes of 1949 ensure
women’s equality in owning property, managing businesses, and initiating legal
cases.[xxxii] Legally, women also enjoy full and independent use of
their income and assets and are free to enter into business contracts. However,
in practice, women who obtain property through inheritance or by their own
financial means may be restricted from making use of it independently because
many families discourage unmarried women from living alone. Families also expect
women to contribute their personal income to the family expenses rather than put
it aside for themselves.
In accordance with Syria’s interpretation of Shari’a
inheritance laws, daughters are entitled to half the inheritance of sons. Yet,
many Syrian women are not aware of their inheritance rights and may turn over
their lawfully inherited property to another relative. Furthermore, male
descendants from a different line of the family may be able to compete with
female descendants of the deceased if the deceased has no male heirs.[xxxiii]
Non-Muslim women do not have the right to inherit from their Muslim
husbands.[xxxiv]
Education is compulsory for all Syrian citizens up to the
age of 11,[xxxv] and all levels of education are free. Nevertheless,
there is a huge drop in enrollment rates after the primary level, when students
apparently leave school to enter the work force. Fewer girls than boys enter
secondary school: the rate of enrollment for boys is a low 41 percent, while
girls enroll at a rate of 37 percent.[xxxvi] Many
girls who leave school, predominantly in rural areas, submit to family pressures
to marry or work. UNICEF has criticized the Syrian government for not doing
enough to combat the phenomenon of girl student drop-outs.[xxxvii]
Kurdish children who are deprived of Syrian citizenship face further
difficulties in trying to enroll in the Syrian school system.
While low participation rates are a problem, Syria has
succeeded in considerably narrowing the gender gap in access to education and
illiteracy since the 1970s. In 1970, 80 percent of women were illiterate
compared to 40 percent of men, while women’s illiteracy rate in 2002 was 25.8
percent, and men’s was 9 percent.[xxxviii]
Women are also receiving university degrees at a rate close to
men. According to UNIFEM, the
percentage of women graduates from Syrian universities was 40.6 and the
percentage of women graduates from professional training institutes was 49.0 in
2000.
In line with the requirements of CEDAW, the government
recently completed a project to rewrite the textbooks used in the school system
to balance the presentation of men and women. Textbooks now show women in
various professions and also emphasize that both Christianity and Islam view
women and men as equals.
In 2002, 29.2 percent of women participated in the labor
force, reflecting a moderate increase since the 1970s. Although women have made
strides in education and labor force participation, very few have reached
leadership positions in business. Women have only begun to infiltrate public
leadership positions and are still excluded from the inner circle of Ba’ath
Party leadership.
Syrian women are not totally free to choose their
profession and are prohibited from working in jobs the government considers
hazardous and/or immoral.[xxxix] Many women who obtain university degrees in medicine,
law, engineering, and the humanities find employment appropriate to their
qualifications, but only 8.7 percent of women have university-level
education.[xl] Women and girls in rural areas often do not receive the
same professional opportunities as women in urban areas and are under pressure
from their families to perform unpaid domestic work rather than complete their
education or seek work outside the home.
Women still tend to work predominantly in low-paid jobs
performing manual labor. They dominate the agriculture sector, contributing 70
percent of agricultural activity, most often as unpaid farming laborers. By
contrast, relatively few women work in administrative, service-oriented,
technical, or industrial jobs, indicating that women are excluded from the
sectors that contribute most to the modern development of the Syrian
economy.[xli] Women also make up a small percentage of the military
and police force. Thirty percent of employed women work in the public
sector,[xlii] where they comprise roughly one-fifth of all public
sector employees. While women who work in the public sector tend to face less
discrimination than in the private sector, they are still largely relegated to
clerical and staff positions.[xliii]
Syria faces a serious unemployment problem as a result of
low GDP growth and high population growth. But with increasing numbers of women
entering the work force, women suffer disproportionately higher rates of
unemployment as they try to break into the labor market.[xliv]
Micro-enterprise loans through the Syrian government and UN Relief and Works
Agency are provided for women at a far lower rate than for men. Furthermore,
agency projects to reach potential borrowers generally target public places
where men are working, and loan guarantee requirements tend to favor forms of
wealth that are more accessible to the male population.[xlv]
While labor regulations insist upon women’s equal access
to job opportunities in the public and private sectors, as well as equal
remuneration for labor, they do not provide any protections in the event of
discrimination.[xlvi] Nevertheless, gender-based discrimination in obtaining
professional employment is reported to be low.
Categories: Releases