In spite of the overarching similarities pertaining
to suppressed or weak civil activism, autocratic
state regimes, and the supremacy of the Sharì≠a,
gender related human rights conditions in the re-
gion are hardly monolithic. In some countries, for
example, Bahrain, Qatar, and Yemen, there exist
recently adopted democratic reforms (freedom of
press, elections, and legalized political parties) that
have benefited women. These reforms depart from
the undemocratic conservativeness of the remain-
ing countries, especially Saudi Arabia, Oman, and
Kuwait, where civil activism and human rights
monitoring are entirely prohibited or severely
restricted and gender equality still looms rudi-
mentary (An-Na±im 2001). Under these favorably
democratic environments, women tend to enjoy
a relatively high degree of political freedom. In
Yemen and Bahrain, women have equal voting
rights. In the former, women’s political rights are
further advanced than any other country in the
region and women can be elected to parliament. Yet
these plausible rights do not alter the fact that the
largest women’s NGO in the country is currently
run as a governmental branch.
Gender related human rights civil activism and
conditions are not only varied but also have been
subject to historical and political transformations.
For example, in the case of southern Yemen under
two decades of socialist regime in the 1970s and
1980s, radical laws pertaining to gender equality
were executed by the state, thereby undermining
pre-existing tribalist customary laws and conserva-
tive applications of the Sharì≠a. Yet these reforms
did not come as a result of gender related civil
movements but as the ambitions of the socialist
state that sought to build a welfare society in which
citizens were all productively accountable vis-à-vis
the power of the state (Molyneux 1981, Seif 1995,
1997, 2002). The abruptness with which these
advantageous human rights conditions were re-
moved in the 1990s following south Yemen’s unifi-
cation with conservative north Yemen attests to the
absence of a strong women’s movement that could
protect gender related rights. Women in Kuwait
and Bahrain, on the other hand, are currently ben-
efiting from recently flourishing waves of demo-
cratic processes and debates that may allow them
full political participation in elections in the general
assemblies (majlis al-shùrà).
Similarly, and in spite of inhibited civil activism,
several countries in the region including Bahrain,
Kuwait, and Yemen have recently appointed or are
in the process of appointing ministerial level posts,
offices, and committees for the protection of human
rights, all of which will have positive effects on the270 human rights
status of gender related human rights in the future.
In the case of Yemen, a woman heads the new min-
istry for human rights.
Notwithstanding these general positive changes,
there exist specific groups of women in the region
whose basic human rights are systematically violated
due to reasons that go beyond societal discrimina-
tory approaches to generalized sexual difference.
In Yemen, for example, long histories of cultural
persecution and prejudices against minority social
groups often subject women perceived to be of
African origin to different sets of discrimination
and human rights abuses. Equally true is the exis-
tence in the region of thousands of foreign female
workers from Asia who suffer severe human rights
abuses through their status as non-citizen domestic
workers. Currently, with no credible human rights
civil movements, neither the states themselves nor
human rights groups within them seem to be effec-
tively engaged with the protection of the human
rights of these groups of women. The gender related
basic human rights of women from marginalized
minority groups and those of migrant domestic
workers, like the rights of all female citizens in the
region, still remain unprotected.Bibliography
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