A political dispute in parliament resulted in a brawl in the course of a discussion over adding the word “Jordanian” to an article of the constitution on equal rights. The new amendment, approved on January 2 with 94 votes out of 120, changed the title of the second chapter of the constitution to “Rights and duties of Jordanians”, adding the feminine al urduniyat.
Some activists argue the amendment is pointless, simply an escape route to avoid the real legal changes the constitution needs to truly support women. “You pretend not to see what is really important,” says Salma Nims, general secretary of the Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW), referring to the continually ignored claims of those asking for “sex” to be added to article 6 of the constitution. , which now bans discrimination on the basis of “race, language and religion” alone. Nims adds that this amendment is not legally binding, because the title of a chapter of the constitution “has no legal effect”.
Political and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Musa Maaytah told Jordanian state media that adding “Jordanian” was a gesture of “honor and respect for women.” Nims disputes this position: “What? I don’t ask to be honored by using a word. This is not about honoring women, this is a constitution, it is used for legal purposes ”.
Deep division
Others fear that the change will have long-term repercussions, affecting the laws governing family status in Jordan, based on Islamic legal teachings and citizenship law. The fear is that the eligibility criteria for Jordanian citizenship could be extended. “The addition of the word ‘Jordan’ is dangerous in the long term for society and the family,” said Hayat al Musami, a former MP and member of the Islamic Action Front (IAF) party.
It is currently unclear whether the effects of the change will be far-reaching or irrelevant, but the debate it has sparked reveals the intense politicization of women, the deep division of the women’s movement and the conflicts that erupt in Jordan when rights are at stake. of women.
Women’s rights “today are linked to anti-Islamic and anti-national identity,” says Oraib Rantawi, director of the Al Quds center for political studies. “The more the concept becomes politicized, and is linked to Islam and national identity, the more difficult the mission of women in the country will be”.
The Jordanian constitution delegates all matters related to the law on the personal status of Muslims to specific courts, which administer family-related cases based on interpretations of Islamic law, or sharia. These Islamic courts do not consider women equal before the law, Jordanian activist Rana Hussein wrote in her latest book Years of struggle — The women’s movement in Jordan (Years of struggle. The women’s movement in Jordan).
However, some believe that the treatment of women should be assessed by these courts on the basis of “equality” and not “fairness”. “We want to keep the statute law as it is, based on Sharia law. What we ask for more than equality is the idea of fairness, ”said Dima Tahboub, former MP and spokesperson for the Islamic Action Front. Tahboub points out her party’s fear that adding the word “Jordanian” will lead to international calls for “total and absolute equality”, in contrast to the “positive discrimination” against women in Islamic laws and the constitution.
“The idea of equity is to give a person of a certain social or economic status the best option so that he or she can best play their role in society,” says Tahboub. And he gives the example of the quota system for women in the Jordanian electoral law, and the law on succession, “where in some cases women can obtain a greater inheritance than men”.
Sauda Salem, a lawyer with 37 years of experience in Jordanian courts, highlights the ways in which Islamic laws “distinguish” women. For example, according to Salem, the law grants women the right to maintenance “regardless of how rich or poor the man is, and stipulates that it is the man’s responsibility to provide for the woman.” If the man fails to do this after the separation, the responsibility rests with the woman’s father, Salem explains. Al Musami says: “We believe these differences are good for the family, for the community. They are good for women and for the Arab people ”.
The fears of the conservatives
In Jordan, the women’s movement is often “demonized” and seen as part of a Western strategy, which has fomented divisions and hindered progress, says Nims: “We have a problem with being approached by NGOs, which occurs in Worldwide”.
Since the kingdom ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) in 1992, it has met resistance especially from conservatives, according to whom the convention violates sharia law and imposes a political project western. “There is an international political project based on the Cedaw, which implies complete equality between men and women. They want there to be no gender differences in any law in the future, ”says Al Musami. “What they ask will make our families unstable.”
But Nims criticizes the role of the Islamic Action Front in perpetuating the gender discrimination inherent in Jordanian laws. “What is the best way to de-legitimize these claims? To say that we are dealing with Western schemes ”.
Rana Hussein, a journalist with over 25 years of experience in promoting women’s rights in Jordan and the region, says: “Whatever you do, whatever you work on, they will tell you that you are an agent of the West.” Husseini also comments on the division of the Jordanian women’s movement: “I have the feeling that there is competition, each one wants to be the person, the individual who makes the change”.
The Palestinian question
Conservatives also fear that the amendment will broaden the eligibility criteria for citizenship and shift the country’s demographic balance in favor of Palestinians. Jordan would thus become the “alternative homeland”, preventing thousands of refugees from returning to occupied Palestine.
The kingdom’s nationality law stipulates that Jordanian women married to non-Jordanian men cannot pass on their citizenship to their children. Despite the lack of access to public services and the labor market restrictions faced by thousands of people without citizenship, the discussion to change the law merges with the Palestinian struggle. The debate is therefore often fueled by fears that the decision “could contribute to the Israeli right’s plans to find a replacement homeland in Jordan for the Palestinians,” observes Husseini in his book.
“I am in favor of the transmission of citizenship from women to children, but Jordan is a special case given the issue of Palestinians and the right of return,” says lawyer and jurist Sauda Salem. “Even if this is the case in many Western countries, this does not mean that it has to be the same in Jordan as well.” And she goes on to say that with the addition of the word “Jordanian”, the woman is now “equal to the man, also as regards citizenship”. “The most important thing is that the old law can be canceled,” Salem says, referring to the passage that states that citizenship can only be passed on by men.
In the course of the controversial debate on the recent amendment, lawmakers added a paragraph that now requires a two-thirds vote of parliament to change the law on citizenship, notes Nour Imam, a lawyer and member of the Jordanian bar.
Nims highlights “the growing nationalist fanaticism” in Jordan. “The hate speech against Jordanians of Palestinian origin is scary,” he says, attributing it to the refusal to change the citizenship law. “It is humiliating to Palestinians to accuse them of being willing to give up their right of return simply by acquiring another nationality. Why don’t these people care about men marrying Palestinian women by giving them citizenship? Is everything okay if a woman becomes a Jordanian? ”.
The women’s rights movement in Jordan is often at the height of a heated debate. Jordanians today live in unprecedented unemployment, and have no healthy outlet for their frustration. So too often women are scapegoats. “For men who cannot express their masculinity through a job or the opportunity to make political decisions and express their opinion, the only place left to exercise power is in the family,” says Nims. And he adds: “‘Let them worry about controlling women’, they say”.
Rana Hussein argues that the controversy over the recent constitutional change was “a little theater to divert attention from other things”. Nims also points out that for some activists the change was a staging: “They were all caught up in changes that have no consequences, while there was not enough discussion or analysis on the important ones.”
Dema Matruk Aloun, a women’s rights activist and private law professor at the Hashemite University, says the changes only served to “beautify the picture”, with no real benefits for women. She and she highlights the need to address deeply ingrained social behaviors towards women: “Men are afraid of strong women. In Jordan it is a fact that men want to be a step above women. Change must begin with society itself, with people ”.
As for the constitution change, for her “it’s like a fire has destroyed a major part of your home and you just put a nice, bulky sofa in the center of the room. You don’t see the rubble around you, you don’t smell it ”.
“Here, smell that smell.”
(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)