By Marie Dhumières
Tuesday, March 08, 2011

BEIRUT: As the world celebrates 100 years since the first International Women’s Day Tuesday, Lebanese activists will be fighting battles for women’s rights throughout the week.

Women’s groups have planned an array of events to raise awareness about the major challenges facing women in modern-day Lebanon. The events lined up for this week tackle the state of Lebanese women from legal, social and psychological perspectives.
One of the novel activities this year is a march organized by feminist group Nasawiya Tuesday against sexual harassment in public places.

The “Take Back the Night” march will see Lebanese women converging from several districts in Beirut on the seaside in Ain al-Mreisseh, where a sit-in will be held to raise awareness awareness about sexual harassment in public places.
“We will be marching from Hamra, Raouche, Sodeco and Cola, all the way to the corniche in Ain al-Mreisseh,” said Lynn Darwish, a Nasawiya activist.

She explained that the corniche was a “male dominated” area, where many women were subjected to verbal and physical harassment. “We will hold a 30-minute sit-in there to reclaim the space,” she said.
As part of events to mark International Women's Day, Nasawiya activists took to the streets over the weekend in a bid to interview Lebanese and foreign women about the main challenges they face and the changes they would like to see happening in Lebanese society.

Other organizations decided to tackle discrimination against women as found in legal texts.
KAFA Enough Violence and Exploitation launched a campaign Monday calling for canceling reservations expressed by the Lebanese state on articles 9 and 16 of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) of 1997.

KAFA have centered their battle on article 16 of CEDAW, dealing with all matters relating to marriage and family relations.
Due to the pluralistic make-up of the country, Lebanon lacks a unified law on marriage and family relations.
Thus Lebanon expressed reservation over CEDAW’s article 16, since matter relating to marriage and family relations are dealt by the leaders of the country’s various sects.

“We are asking for a lifting of these reservations, so that personal status is not left for the religions to deal with,” said Ghada Jabbour of KAFA.
Last week, KAFA started airing television and radio spots, as part of a regional media campaign to withdraw reservations on article 16.

Another women’s rights hot topic fervently defended by activists in Lebanon is the right of Lebanese women to pass on their nationality to their families.
In that framework, the Collective for Research, Training on Development-Action (CRTD.A) has been battling since 2002 for Lebanese women to be granted the right to pass on their nationalities to their children.

Lebanon’s Nationality Law, which was adopted under the French Mandate in 1925, prohibits Lebanese women from granting their nationality to their husbands and children if they marry a non-Lebanese.
Once again this year, the CRTD.A will be campaigning for Lebanon to withdraw its reservation to CEDAW’s article 9.2, which stipulates that states should grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children.

A minor breakthrough was achieved last year, as a decree approved in April 2010 and effective since September now allows the children of Lebanese mothers and foreign fathers to be granted a renewable three-year residency permit.

Touching upon the controversial issue of nationality, CRTD.A will be launching a new documentary film by director Carole Mansour titled “All for the Nation,” in collaboration with the Women Learning Partnership and the German and Dutch Embassies during a ceremony at the Babel Theater in Beirut Tuesday evening.
The documentary zooms in on Lebanese women married to non-Lebanese men and the denial of their citizenship rights.

“The testimonies are from women with different religious, social and cultural backgrounds,” said CRTD.A’s Rola Masri, who hoped the documentary will “show politicians and the public that all women are targeted.”
According to U.N. figures in 2010 18,000 Lebanese women married non-Lebanese men between 1995 and 2008, and 41,400 individuals are children of a Lebanese mother and a foreign father.

According to Masri, some rights were more difficult to achieve for “political reasons.”
She said while campaigns on nationality and civil marriage have faced many obstacles, other demands such as the right of women to open bank accounts for their children and the campaign to prevent domestic violence have quickly bore fruit.

“That’s because these were not linked to sensitive political issues like nationality or civil marriage,” she said. “It all depends on the political implication of the demands presented.”

Meanwhile, the National Commission on Lebanese Women, chaired by First Lady Wafaa Sleiman, will launch Tuesday a national campaign to remove discrimatory clauses from laws with economic impact.
The campaign aims at advocating for the reform of laws that have “negative impact on economic life for women,” explained Joumana Mufarej, a member of the commission.

“The National Commission is going to launch a year-long campaign asking for the government to amend laws that have a discriminatory effect on women,” she said.
Nathalie Chemali, coordinator of the Women Economic Empowerment project at CRTD.A, confirmed some sections of the social security, commerce and tax codes did not grant women the same rights as men.

She mentioned article 46.2 of the Social Security code, which states that a married woman is only entitled to a family allowance if she is unemployed, when her husband has right to it whether he is working or not, and article 31, which does not allow women to benefit from tax allowances for their children unless their husband is dead or disabled.

Mufarej said these laws contradicted Lebanon’s commitment to the CEDAW. “Lebanon doesn’t fulfill its engagements on this matter,” she said. “We call for Lebanon to respect the convention regarding these laws.”

However, although activists are aware change is slow to implement when it comes to human rights issues in Lebanon, some say the recent events in the region show that “change is possible,” CRTD.A’s Masri said.
Masri and Nasawiya’s Darwish voiced hope that demonstrations to “topple the sectarian system” that took place in the past two weeks will succeed in empowering Lebanese women.
“Discrimination against women is totally linked to the sectarian system,” said Masri.