Arab Forum for Alternatives

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Arab forum for alternatives organized a project on the concept and practices of citizenship after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and its impact on Strengthening Women’s rights, in partnership with Arab forum for citizenship in Transition, and International Peace Institute. The project aims to come up with policy recommendations on specific issues such as citizenship and political and civil rights, citizenship and economic and social rights, citizenship and civil society, religious institutions and the discourse of citizenship. The following are executive summaries of the policy papers:

• Women and citizenship: reading the religious capital: Dr. Sameh Fawzy

This paper focuses on the issue of religious capital and whether it poses any support for the rights and freedoms of women or it the religious capital is still masculine and manipulative of the political and social movements, religious speeches have not undergone any major changes after Arab revolutions yet they remained captive in the same traditional spaces. In the same context, religious institutions are still traditional and only men are in charge of with a symbolic existence for women, both in Islamic or Christian experiences in Egypt. The paper presents a number of recommendations on many levels, recommendations for decision-makers (for instance educational institutions, legislations, public institutions), also there is a recommendation for religious institutions, which carry the development of religious education and the openness of religious institutions to society and, finally, the study provides recommendations for civilian organizations and women forces to strengthen the participation of women and get away from the promotion of hostile discourses toward the religious capital and also encourage different religious interpretations that are in the promotion of women’s citizenship.

• Women and citizenship: towards consolidation of women’s civil and political rights: Nouran Sayed Ahmed

This paper focuses on women’s civil and political rights on the grounds that women in the Egyptian society occupies approximately 49% of the community as a whole and therefore are considered a large block and this block suffer of many problems at the level of civil and political rights as they face many denial of the exercise of candidacy and voting rights and denial of access to public office. The paper also dealt with a number of international experiences, which, as in the case of Britain adopting the idea of commissioners ​​of anti-discrimination, and there is also what is known as affirmative actions, as is the case of the American context. Also the paper presents a number of recommendations regarding the treatment of the crisis of women’s civil and political rights in addressing legislative frameworks for instance elections and political parties laws, also presenting a recommendation on creation of new entities and enable them to work on integration of women in the society, such as commissions of anti-discrimination, in addition to attempts of revising educational curricula.

• Women and citizenship: role of feminist associations in supporting women rights: Rania Zada

The project mainly aims to come up with recommendations concerning citizenship and women after the Arab revolutions. This paper focus on the role of feminist associations in supporting women’s rights in light of the overall context after the Arab revolutions and specifically in Egypt, where there was great controversy about the law of civil society organizations, as well as the existence of an article in the constitution of 2014 that provides equality between women and men. The paper presented a number of international experiences, such as the Czech experience and the role played by the women’s organizations in supporting women’s rights, the paper introduced three strategies that the civil society by adopting shall pursue  an active role in supporting women’s rights and these strategies are about connection of organizations with the masses, and networking among organizations, and the third strategy relates to the need to change legislations governing the issue of women’s rights.

• Women and citizenship: establishing partnership between the parliament and civil society: Omar Samir

In the same project, This paper focuses on the importance of promoting economic and social rights for women, especially after the Arab revolutions, as there are many objective and subjective factors that consolidated some differences and imbalances suffered by women, as women in Egypt form signify an important part of the informal economy . The paper also dealt with  a number of models and international experiences, such as Ireland, the experiences of Latin American countries, which are relatively successful experiences in reducing the risk of poverty and promotion of economic and social rights of women through the provision of social welfare programs for women. The paper offers a number of recommendations, including the importance of the next parliament prioritize the law of establishing the National Commission for anti-discrimination as a tool of social justice and also in addition to the amendments to the existing labor law.