By Brendan Sweeney
The three-day meeting, on the theme of women’s rights aims to create a joint strategy to meet the challenges facing National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in European and Arab states.
These challenges include fulfilling NHRI mandates to promote and protect human rights in general as well as tackling the three major themes of the Arab-European Human Rights Dialogue, i.e. counter-terrorism and human rights, access to information and migration and human rights.
In his opening address, Ali bin Simaikh Al Merri, Chairman of NHRC noted that the conference coincided with the centenary of International Women’s Day and the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of Al Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Delivering the keynote address at the opening session, Afarin Shahidzadeh, Deputy Chief of National Institutions and Regional Mechanisms Section, OHCHR, Geneva, focused on the issue of women and domestic violence.
“In countries where domestic violence is still not criminalised, national human rights institutions should engage in sensitising the Parliament on the need to legally prohibit any moral or physical ill-treatment and violence among members of the same family. National human rights institutions should also provide training to law enforcement officials on how seriously they should treat these cases and the protection they should provide to the victims. Members of the judiciary should also benefit from such sensibilisation activities,” said Afarin Shahidzadeh.
She added that national human rights institutions could play an important role in assisting governments in the implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action, which requests all states to work actively towards the ratification of all human rights instruments including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Bader Al Dafa, Executive Secretary General of the UN Economic Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) also addressed the opening session. He told the Qatari newspaper The Peninsula that Arab governments and NGOs should work together to improve the status of women in the region and that many Arab countries lack proper legislation to ensure the representation of women in parliament and in political life. He cited Iraq as an example for other Muslim countries to follow as the Iraqi parliament reserves 20 per cent of its seats for women.
Mu’ayyad Mehyar, DIHR Programme Manager for the Arab-European Dialogue, who helped to organise the meeting said that the Dialogue would enable participants from Europe as well as the Arab World to discuss, review and reflect on their experiences and practices to promote women’s rights and gender equality as well as to highlight the importance of coordination and collaboration amongst each other as well as with international organizations, UN agencies and regional EU and Arab institutions.”
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