Page 5 - Elite-Issue14

ELITE ISSUE 14, DECEMBER 2019 PAGE 4

Marriage Age and Giving Nationality to Egyptian
Women's babies were contentious issue when

forming the 2014 constitution

One of the most important cases that we adopted was Genital You have exerted a lot of efforts to support NGOs, where you
mutilation for girls and child marriages, and hadn ’t it been for our have launched lately an online platform to train individuals how to
field work and meeting with key characters from within the start an NGO, can you explain to us your vision?
communities that we worked with, this reminds me of “Mohamed, ” Since the establishment of the National Women Center and to this
a very old guy I met once, when we launched our campaign to raise day, we ’ve worked on adopting NGOs through its different phases
awareness about Child Marriages in one village, and he was one of since their establishment, and provided them with technical
the people responsible to get suitors to young girls, so on meeting support and also provided them with human resource services,
him, I discovered that the real reason behind their eagerness to marry bearing in mind the surge of technological advances, we had to
off the girls at a very young age was because they didn ’t receive any develop our reach for these organizations, so we shifted from old
education, and led empty lives, so for him, marriage for the girl is a means of communication of using the telephone or arranging
way to “preserve, ” her, and so, this talk to me, was the window to training sessions with these new organizations to more modern
the perspective of these people to the issue, and I consider it to be of means of communications, that is the online platform that we
more importance than any information I got about the dimensions of launched, on adopting this method we succeeded in providing the
this issue from other intellectuals, as because of his words, I re- same services to a wider range of recipients that is estimated to be
oriented the purpose of the campaign from focusing on child thousands of interns with cheaper costs than before.
marriage to the focus on the importance of education for young girls, In addition to that, I see that our main aim as a developmental
organization, is not profit or business centred, but it is knowledge
I want to add that our work in the center led to a change in the work of
dissemination, that is why we are always willing to provide our
NGOs from just volunteer work to the move towards legal advocacy
services to anyone in need without charge.
and raising awareness to cases that were never discussed before, like

sexual harassment, were we launched a campaign against it, a first in
As a member of the 50-member Commission, can you tell us what
Egypt and the Middle East which caught the attention of foreign were the points of conflict on the issues concerned with women,
media, and we kept track of the developments of fighting this crime,
during the articulation of the current constitution in comparison
on the legal level, and debated with the Ministry of Justice about the
with previous constitutions?
necessity of classifying it as a crime and put a definite punishment on
One of the most debated about articles, was the one related to the
it, until the constitution of 2014 was articulated with the classification
granting of Egyptian mothers their citizenships to their children,
of Sexual Harassment as a crime, We also succeeded in amending
that I insisted on documenting in the constitution, but my wishes
more than 20 laws concerned with women rights, among which is the
was opposed to by many, including feminist leaders as well, with
Citizenship law of 2004, that allows women to grant their citizenship
the excuse that a law was already issued regarding the matter, but
to their children from foreign fathers, and the right to divorce law in
from my point of view, it was crucial to put it in the constitution
2000, and one of the most significant changes that we succeeded to
to avoid the nullification of the law, where the trend after 2011,
achieve was the nullification of 292 Law in 1999 that gave the
was the nullification of many laws that granted women their
exemption from trial of the rapist on his marriage to his victim, along
rights, but amending the constitution would be much more
with equality in tax accounts between genders, and the call for
difficult so by including this law in the constitution would provide
applying Women Quotas in parliament,
more protection for women in this regard,

Article 19, concerned with the age of obligatory education, was also
To sum up, our work in the centre is based on three main pillars,
much argued about, where the suggested amendment was extending
creating strong relations with the society, research work, and creating
the obligatory education level to reach High school, but this
strong relation with decision makers and try to understand the motives
recommendation was faced by opposition from representatives of
behind actions without prior judgement.
the Islamist strand in the committee,