• Legal empowerment & access to justice

Legal empowerment & access to justice

One of the root causes of the social and economic problems in the Arab world is the structural discrimination against women in these countries, a conclusion reached by the Arab Human Development Reports. Women have lower life expectancy, maternal mortality remains high, illiteracy rates are high and, in no other part of the world do women play such a marginal role in economic life.

Key fields of action for interventions aiming to improve the legal situation of women include: 

• ending discrimination in formal law
• improving women’s access to their rights and strategies to assert legal entitlement
• disseminating an understanding of the legal situation through lobby work with multipliers and religious leaders

This paper analyses successful case studies for change in Egypt, Jordan and Yemen and looking at the lessons learnt from these case studies. Suggestions for next steps which could be applied in other Arab countries include: 

• linking lobbying with training and action research 
  
• targeted work with employees of the judiciary and religious leaders (male and female) 
  
• establishing national and regional alliances (networks) for campaigns and on individual topics 
  
• professional media work 
  
• a combination of expertise and emotion in PR work 
  
• creativity and courage when dealing with public institutions 
  
• customised solutions to practical problems

[adapted from the author]

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend