Mediterranean ministers adopt declaration enhancing women’s rights

AMMAN —  Minister of Social Development Hala Lattouf last week stressed the need to further strengthen women’s role in the Mediterranean by uniting efforts among all parties to ensure the proper implementation of recommendations that favour women’s empowerment and equality. 

“Women’s equality with men in all forms of life is basic human rights and is an important condition to achieve sustainable development,” Lattouf said on Wednesday.

Lattouf’s remarks came during the 4th the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) ministerial conference on “Strengthening the Role of Women in Society” that took place on November 27 in Cairo. The meeting gathered ministers and representatives of ministries from the 43 member countries of the UfM. 

The ministerial conference, which was chaired by Lattouf in the presence of the UfM Secretary General, Fathallah Sijilmassi, was hosted by Egypt represented by the president of the National Council for Women, Maya Morsy.

The participants adopted a ministerial declaration with proposed actions and measures in four priority areas including raising women’s participation in public life and decision-making; improving women’s economic participation; combating all forms of violence against females; and eliminating gender stereotypes.

Last week, the Euromed Feminist Initiative organised the Euro-Med Women’s Right Civil Society Conference in Cairo, which saw the participation of 130 representatives from 107 women’s rights and human rights organisations and networks, as well as gender experts, academia and media from 26 countries, who worked to prepare recommendations for the UfM meeting. 

The civil society participants built on the achievements of the Gender Regional Platform policy dialogue, which aimed to foster, widen and consolidate the sustainable regional dialogue on gender equality with stakeholders.   

 Executive Director of Euromed Feminist Initiative Boriana Jonsson and Co-President of Euromed Feminist Initiative Leila Al Ali presented the Civil Society Declaration to the Ministers during their ministerial meeting on November 27.

Some of the declaration points included calls for the absolute need to ensure independence and freedom of expression, movement and action, as well as funding of the civil society, which particularly enables the women’s rights organiations’ capacity to play their leading role in reshaping society and contribute to the fight against extremism. 

Another point focused on the need to develop and implement comprehensive gender equality laws following the examples of most advanced countries in the matter, to address multi-layered structural inequalities, accompanied by means and resources required to transfer texts into concrete actions leading to the improvement of women’s lives. 

The governments also urged for undertaking political solutions to existing conflicts, in a manner that favours an environment conducive to democracy and development in the Euro-Med region.

The declaration stressed the urgent need to initiate a regional peace process geared towards finding political solutions to all the conflicts in the region and called for finding ways to end the occupation of Palestine, enabling the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

It also called for organising structural access of women’s groups and women’s rights defenders to formal peace negotiations in the region, so that issues related to equal citizenship and gender equality are included in all peace and transitional processes from their inception. 

“The Gender Regional Platform will remain the roadmap for the women’s rights organisations to continue their independent dialogue with the decision makers in order to contribute to improving of the status of women’s rights in the region,” Jonsson said.

“We shall follow up with the decision makers on the implementation of the recommendations outlined in the declaration and will issue an independent report before the next Ministerial Conference,” Jonsson told The Jordan Times. 

Most importantly, Jonsson added, these recommendations remain a tool in the hands of the civil society, together with other international women’s rights mechanism “to continue our work towards gender equality and women’s rights in the whole region”. 

The Euromed Feminist Initiative has followed the UfM Ministerial Process on women’s rights since its first ministerial conference in 2016 in Istanbul, and has since then used the ministerial conclusions as a major regional tool for mobilising the civil society, supporting the accumulation of political will for the promotion and implementation of women’s rights and gender equality across the Euro-Med Region.  

To this end, Euromed Feminist Initiative launched a policy dialogue in 2015, led by women’s rights CSOs that brought together over 600 representatives from women’s rights CSOs, CBOs, gender experts, academics and researchers with decision makers and legislators, supported by the European Union, according to the initiative website.

The outcome of this national and regional dialogue process was the Gender Regional Platform which formulated concrete policy recommendations to the 4th UfM ministerial meeting which were taken into consideration in the UfM ministerial declaration.