This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 12/12/2010
The women’s movement in Jordan, spearheaded by the Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW), has developed a very ambitious platform to promote women’s rights across the board.
Maybe the movement should hold its horses for a while and articulate a strategy to consolidate the gains that women have managed to acquire before targeting additional goals all at once.
The fear is that over ambitious goals may trigger a backlash at a time when women’s rights are not quite half way through their long journey towards salvation and freedom.
In the long list of objectives set by the JNCW on behalf of the movement there are certainly some aspirations that are reachable in a rather short time, while others may have to wait till the women’s cause catches its breath.
Soliciting immediate parliamentary support for amendments to the Penal Code touching on women’s fundamental rights is certainly in order.
There are two classic examples of the much sought after amendments: The first has to do with the ridiculous criminal law jurisprudence that grants immediate family members of a female victim the option to drop charges against a person who takes her life so that the killer’s sentence can be commuted considerably to just a few years of imprisonment!
This sort of criminal justice is outrageous and ridiculous all in one. This travesty in the administration of justice must end and end soon.
The life of a person is not a commodity for buying and selling! Why Jordan still tolerates this grave and brazen injustice is really troubling.
On another front, the fact that under our system of criminal justice a rapist can go scot free if he marries his victim is equally treacherous and shocking to all fair-minded people. This anomaly in the criminal jurisprudence must also cease immediately for obvious reasons. Suffice to point out that this criminal injustice is at the expense of the victim who would end up paying twice for a crime committed against her by a rapist!
Where the JNCW may have gone wrong is when they push for granting women the right to pass on their citizenship to their spouses and children alike. This sounds impractical and not necessarily consistent with international norms. Putting spouses and children on the same plateau is incorrect in law. It is one thing to give a child the right to acquire the citizenship of his mother and quite another to extend this right to a spouse. There is no country in the world that grants immediate citizenship rights to a husband of a citizen.
A husband of a national could be entitled to residency rights, which he must nevertheless apply for in due course. Children who are under the age of 18 are normally entitled to the citizenship of their mother or father or both.
This is the rule of thumb in international human rights law. This side of the equation appears justifiable and could be pursued on a gradual basis.
The JNCW must first concentrate for the time being on granting residency rights to children of Jordanian women married to foreigners and proceed to go further at a more appropriate time.
We all know the familiar political constraints and implications that would make granting citizenship rights to children of Jordanian women married to non-Jordanians impractical, at least for the time being.
In short, the champions of women’s right should take a breather after achieving the most pressing rights, which definitely include raising the quota for their representation in Parliament to at least 30 per cent.
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