IWD-2018: Women in Lebanon rally for legal reform

Under the slogan, ‘Different Causes, Shared Anger’, Lebanese feminist associations took to the street yesterday in a huge rally marking the International Women’s Day. The march started from Adlieh roundabout through Barbir to its final destination at Hawd al Wilaya in the neighborhood of Basta, where demonstrators hoisted signs calling for the adoption of laws that protect minors from early marriage, give mothers the right to grant nationality to their children, as well as their rights to equality and protection from violence and sexual harassment. Participants in the rally chanted slogans demanding immediate reforms of the current laws, including the patriarchal confessional representation quota. “We have the right to a civil personal status law,” they shouted. Towards the end of the demonstration, a statement was read noting that the gender-based violence rooted in the cultural and legal system prevents women from participating in public life and impedes the amendment of bigoted personal status legislations. The statement also pointed out that the same Lebanese ruling clique bans women from engaging in politics, while clinging to regulations and decrees that criminalize and stigmatize LGBT persons. The statement stressed the need to abolish all measures hampering the rights of decent work to migrant domestic workers, as well as, to Palestinian and Syrian women refugees, and calling for the accountability of those responsible for the deportation of some non-Lebanese people.  (An Nahar, Al Mustaqbal, Al Akhbar, March 12, 2018)
 

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