ومعانا - الله يكرمك - نسوان !

Quote: ولكن ما يتعلق بالنساء يظل كما هو مهما بلغت المرأة من العلم.

Quote: لا يجب أن تطرح الحقوق البديهية للمفاوضة، طرق أبواب الحياة كـ (إنسان) أجدى من إهدار الوقت و الجهد في إثبات ما لا يحتمل الإنكار...

Quote: Women and Politics in Sudan THE NECESSITY OF BEING EARNEST The Contribution of Ms.Asma Abdelhalim -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE NECESSITY OF BEING EARNEST: You have touched the women, You have struck a rock, You have dislodged a boulder, You will be crushed. This is not a new feminist song, this is the song that Southern African women sang in the fifties to protest apartheid. To dislodge a boulder is certainly a dangerous act! In the case of Sudanese women, only God knows whose head the boulder may fall on. The boulder is still being treated as fragile and there seems to be a hope that if it moves it only falls down to crash and it takes years to put it together. There seems to be no exceptions regarding the fragility of women, even within the ranks of those who historically have been known to be staunch supporters of women's participation.In the first democratic era, women fell victims to the patriarchal attitudes of the nationalists. Taking the back seat was the respectable polite thing to do. During the second democratic era we thought we were steadily striding towards achieving equality, we lost again. In the third democracy we hardly had the time to reorganize and step out of the traditional revolutionary tactics of the sixties. Before we could liberate ourselves of the less than courteous laws and by-laws we were scattered by a blow of another dictatorship. Of course it is not the women's fault that we lost out three times since independence. But to paraphrase Lady Bracknell (The importance of being Earnest), to be cheated twice is understandable, but to lose a third time is at least carelessness. Considering the way things have been going on at the NDA, it looks like there is more than carelessness. To lose within the ranks of the NDA would have amounted to culpability. Thanks to the relentless Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim we may just have earned a breathing room. For the millions of Sudanese women inside the Sudan it is the here and now situation that takes over everything else. The right to life is hardly an academic issue, the right to health is as inaccessible to them as the right to development or the right to living in their own communities. Women are by and large the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak. A capitalist state have been created in the worst sense of the word. With all subsidies withdrawn women are finding it rough to survive a system that favors men when it comes to health, education and other social services. In a state that vowed that it is God's word that rules and the vices of the past are behind us, women seeking higher education are falling into the traps of achieving goals in a discriminatory state. For years now a rise in prostitution has been publicly discussed. Recently al Fajr newspaper quoted a local Sudanese paper that reported a rise in the number of illegitimate children! If it isn't "looking at the elephant and stabbing the shadow". We cannot talk about prostitution in a clean immaculate society but we can raise eye brows and wonder about illegitimate children. Well any idiot knows that children do not grow on trees and women cannot get pregnant on their own. It is easier to discuss those children because a discussion of prostitution would involve men but illegitimate children are the responsibility of women who should be ostracized for having them. There is a big question mark regarding the rights of unwed mothers and those of their children. (a discussion of the existing laws may reveal a shameful situation) The laws of the land are the harshest when it comes to sexual crimes, yet that type of crime is flourishing! It may be interesting to note that crimes usually committed by women increase because of the demand by men. Men are the major consumers of the products of home liquor brewing and prostitution, both acts are crimes under the Sudanese law and both are the dominated by women. If we rule out the strange, for lack of a better word, attitude that prostitution is a business and a service that should be protected, women suffer three folds: first by being delivered to poverty, second by being degraded and violated through prostitution and third by being punished by a set of laws fit for a land that does not tolerate infringement of its laws because it provided a good life for its citizens. I prefer not to get into the details of these laws in this short contribution. It is sufficient for my purposes to just touch upon the framework or the constitutional articles that address women. The past constitutions (1956,1973, 1985) had general clauses of equality that were totally ignored when the laws were made. We all remember what happened during the Nimieri era when discriminatory laws that were in direct contradiction with the constitution were made. The short lived 1985 constitution existed side by side with blatant discrimination against women. Was the existence of unconstitutional laws in anyway the fault of women? Emphatically No, women who have been outside the decision making and the legislative machines from time immemorial. Women did succumb to the limits drawn, any attempt to cross over the limits are sure to bring out the question "have feminists gone too far?" The question itself proves that someone or some system has drawn a line for women. Women may debate their "issues" within the framework and the limits provided any attempts to cross the line are unacceptable. This limitation in space became the number one handicap for women moving forward, because the forward is limited. To add insult to injury the institutions initiated by women were/are given less credibility. The famous Nimieri era joke told that "the women's union was doing really well until women entered it." The shape and magnitude of women's participation has always been decided by men in power. We are blocked by the paradigm that by respecting the unjust domination we will be respected. Our fear to break the normal is quite apparent in the memo sent to the NDA by women in Cairo. The memo lists all types of rights, it is a wonderful list of what women want. Yet they could not break way from putting the heavy leash of governing their rights by the famous statement "according to religion and other sacred beliefs". Women are part of the religious society and are followers of the religions, they may not protest the fact that they are governed by religion, but they ought to protest the fact that religion have for ever been used against them. Women can live according to their religion, because religions whether we like it or not brought the word right into the lives of human beings. Women are asking to live under a just system that protects their rights including the right to religion. At this time even the limited rights granted under the rubric of those religions are inaccessible to women, and when they are accessible they are limited either by policies that do away with them in practice or through an interpretation that women do not accept and serves only the power that seeks to dominate women.It is no surprise that the men in the NDA and other political institutions think that they can still craft and provide limits for women's participation, but women will continued to see themselves independent people who should get respectability through insistence on their rights rather than by what men order or suggest. The 1998 constitution makes no promises to women, it promises dignity but no express rights. Under this constitution women cannot fight for constitutional rights because practically those rights are either not there or taken away through the vague language of the constitution as a whole. It is obvious that the constitution sees women only as part of the family and the home and employs a language that deprives them of any constitutional rights. Practically and theoretically women stumble on Shari'a and customary law every time they try to assert what they think is their religious or conventional right. A unified code that treats all families in all religions equally is highly in order now. My own feeling, based on no serious research, is that the civil society in the Sudan now is being supported by women and for the first time women organizations are focusing on building the civil society. The harsh political facts of the Sudan moved them from a direct confrontation, except in few necessary cases, to the direct contact with women who need their help. It is no longer a chosen group that takes responsibility it is time for the grassroots to take responsibility for their lives in their own hands. But this is another subject that may be people who are closely connected with the civil society in the Sudan could elaborate on. Writing this piece I find myself closer to brainstorming than leading to certain conclusions. But I should be clear on some points regarding organizing women. First: We should shed the ridiculous idea (that is being tossed in our faces by certain political entities) that women should agree politically or religiously or on any other grounds before they can make a statement regarding their rights. Women disagree as much as men do. Second: The presence of women as members in the different parties should serve as pressure factor on the political parties to come to terms with women and take seriously their fight for their rights. The numbers of women who vote are the real weight for women. Third: If there is a minimum ground that women should agree on, it is how to employ their presence in the parties to achieve their rights. By now we should have learnt the lesson that our rights are not second class rights that should wait until the men put the whole world in order. We have learnt that most of the dilemma that our economies and community life is in, has been caused by the neglect of women's human and legal rights. Forth: Once we are able to bring our rights to the forefront and make each party feel that there is a great loss to be sustained by not maintaining those rights and a great gain by honoring them, women's issues will then become a serious task to be undertaken by every big and small political power . Fifth: The civil society part, namely women organizations, should never be given up, on the contrary women of different political affiliations should seek to strengthen those organizations. Women cannot deliver the necessary votes neither take a lead unless they are organized in service delivery and advocacy organizations that monitor not only the socio political situation but also keep a check on the women who are leading inside their parties and make sure that they are not compromising any rights. The presence of women in political parties will never replace the need for a strong civil society Sixth: We should follow the lead of other nations that stopped thinking of women as "one issue" that they have to deal with. Women are everywhere and are affecting everything, ghettoizing their issues inside the political parties and addressing them in one clause in a charter can be dangerous. I should stop here and let this be expanded through the rest of the discussion sessions. Thank you. Asma Abdelhalim