Women in Arab countries continue to remain deprived of some of their most basic rights. One major issue faced by women in several Arab countries is not being able to pass on their citizenship to their children.
In Lebanon, national laws do still not allow Lebanese women to pass on their nationality to their children or husbands. As a result, thousands of children are born and raised in the country but have no Lebanese citizenship, and can thus face obstacles.
According to Sawsan Shoman, a Lebanese lawyer, Lebanon´s parliament has voted against changing the law many times with the explanation that it would change demographics. However, the real issue that makes parliamentarians continuously vote against the law is that a change in legislation would have an effect on the sectarian system on which Lebanon is based, Shoman continues.
Over the past decades, Iraq has signed several international conventions on women´s rights. In 1986, Iraq ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international legal provision that requires countries to eliminate discrimination against women and girls. However, back then Iraq still had reservations about some clauses in the CEDAW, including the article which stipulates that women must have the right to pass on their nationality to their children.
Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, however, Iraq drafted a new constitution which was implemented in 2005. Under the new constitution, anyone who is born to an Iraqi father or to an Iraqi mother is considered an Iraqi citizen and will thus be granted citizenship.
In Yemen, women are pushing for a change in the law that would allow Yemeni women to pass on nationality to their children, whether the woman is married to a foreigner or not.
According to Afraa al-Hariri, a lawyer and human rights activist from Yemen, there were serious efforts to have the law changed before the conflict in Yemen broke out in 2014. Up until 2011, there was a Yemeni committee tasked with handling a potential change in the law. However, the committee stopped its work when the conflict broke out and civil society organizations had to shift focus to handle the acute needs of the people. As a result, the momentum was lost.
In Libya, there is the issue of Libyan women who have children with foreigners, mainly from other Arab countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, Syria, and Sudan. The children are denied the right to citizenship. These families have for long been lobbying the Libyan authorities to be able to grant their children citizenship. The families argue that it is their inherent right stipulated in the international conventions that the Libyan state has signed.
According to Sabah Shuaib, an activist from Libya, Libyan women face several legal issues relating to marriage and citizenship. Not only do Libyan women face legal discrimination in regards to their children and citizenship, but also obstacles in obtaining marriage-licenses to marry non-Libyans, Shuaib says. This issue arose following the Libyan Mufti´s call in 2013 to prevent Libyan women from marrying foreign men. Libyan men, however, do not face any restrictions in regards to marrying non-Libyan women and their children are granted citizenship automatically. Their non-Libyan wives can also easily obtain citizenship.
