Thirty years after the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), discrimination against women still permeates societies in direct and indirect forms.
Members of the Jordanian Parliament met on 31 March 2009 to identify laws that discriminate against women and agree a plan of action to address them. Organized by the Jordanian House of Representatives, the IPU and UNDP, the meeting was part of a series of activities aimed at strengthening parliament's role in the implementation of international conventions related to women’s rights and equality. The first activity was a parliamentary seminar on CEDAW held in Amman in November 2008.
The March meeting, opened by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. A. Al Majali, brought together participants from both Houses of Parliament, national human rights and women’s rights institutions, civil society and international organizations. Participants worked on identifying discriminatory provisions contained in some of Jordan’s national laws with a view to "achieving further progress in equality and harmonization between domestic laws and the provisions of the CEDAW", according to Ms. F. Al Jamaani, MP and Rapporteur of the meeting.
"In recent years, progress in Jordan was achieved with the adoption of the Domestic Violence Act and the amendment of certain articles of the Labour Act" highlighted Mr. M. Al Abadi, Chair of the Legal Committee of the House of Representatives. However, more needs to be done as discriminatory provisions remain in several pieces of legislation, such as the Labour Code, the social security act and the electoral act.
Participants emphasized the importance of their role as members of parliament, not only in discussing and approving bills and amendments, but also in using the parliamentary legislative initiative to amend discriminatory provisions. While recalling regional and national specificities, including those linked to Sharia (Islamic law) provisions on personal status, recommendations were made with a view to securing rights for foreign family members of Jordanian women (excluding nationality), guaranteeing protection for women’s and girls’ inheritance rights and involving parliament in preparing Jordan’s country report to the United Nations Committee on CEDAW.
An all-party working group was formed at the conclusion of the meeting, comprising male and female MPs, representatives of the National Centre for Human Rights and members of the National Committee for Women’s Affairs.
