Commending the State of Kuwait for Granting Women Certain Important Political Rights

COMMENDING THE STATE OF KUWAIT FOR GRANTING WOMEN CERTAIN IMPORTANT POLITICAL RIGHTS -- (Extensions of Remarks - July 18, 2005)

SPEECH OF
HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL
OF NEW YORK
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MONDAY, JULY 11, 2005

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support the Crowley Resolution (H. Res. 343). This resolution recognizes an important first step taken by the State of Kuwait toward giving Kuwaiti women the right to fully participate in politics. On May 16, 2005, the Kuwait parliament amended Article 1 of the Election Law 35 of 1962, providing female citizens of Kuwait the right to vote and run for office in the 2007 elections. This is the first time in the four decades women have had the right to vote in Kuwait.

This first step is in no small measure attributable to the many years of campaigning and legal challenges to the discriminatory electoral law of 1962. In past years, women's rights activists have been turned away by officials from voter registration centers. In June 2000, a number of women filed a complaint against the Minister of the Interior, al-Shikh Mohammad Khaled al-Sabah challenging Kuwaiti election law on the grounds that the law denied women the right to vote. The challenge was heard by the Kuwait Constitutional Court but rejected. A similar challenge was rejected in 2001. Most of these attempts to win the vote for women were blocked by Islamic conservatives.

However, the human rights defenders in Kuwait persisted. According to the BBC News, with this most recent vote, both men and women rallied calling for the parliament to amend the discriminatory law. The BBC reported that while some of the women protestors were covered completely in full-length veils, many were dressed in the pale blue color that symbolizes the struggle of women in Kuwait. The protestors were allowed to watch the historic nine hour parliamentary debate.

In the 1991 Gulf War, the United States sent its young men and women to defend Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded. The war was widely declared to be about protecting the freedom of the Kuwaiti people. Yet fully one-half of those people, the women of Kuwait, were not able to participate in the political process of representative government either as voters or elected representatives. This lack of ability to participate in the political process of a country is not freedom as we in America understand it.

International human rights organization, special committees of the United Nations, the State Department of this country, and the Congress of the United States have long recognized, as does the Crowley Resolution, that the rights of women are of paramount importance in international human rights. In 1994, Kuwait acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and in 1996 it acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In its concluding remarks on Kuwait's implementation of the UN Women's Convention, the CEDAW committee expressed its concern at Kuwait's failure to ensure that women had, on equal terms with men, the right to vote in all elections and public referenda and to be eligible for election to all publicly elected bodies. It noted that the lack of political rights of women also has a negative impact on women's enjoyment of other rights protected under the Convention.

CEDAW called on Kuwait to reform its electoral law with adoption of legislation to amend the discriminatory 1962 legislation in order to bring Kuwait Law into compliance with its CEDAW and the ICCPR. With its vote on May 16, 2005, the State of Kuwait has taken action in support of its pledge to CEDAW and the ICCPR. Changing a law to end discrimination is much more important than just signing the agreement to do so.

The status of women in the Gulf States has been an issue of deep concern to me. Women in many Gulf States are treated as second class citizens. In Saudi Arabia for example, women do not have the right to vote, drive or leave their homes without a male relative. Many women in Gulf States are not able to chose their husbands and have few domestic rights. Domestic violence against young wives, some as young as 12, is a serious problem in some Gulf States. When women cannot vote and have no representation, these important issues concerning them are not addressed. As has been pointed out in many reports, if women have the vote and the right to run for office, they will be at the heart of the political decision-making process. Women in politics can consider important measures to protect women from violence, and from the threat of AIDS. In States where there is no representation for women, violence against women is one of the most pervasive of human rights abuses. When there are issues concerning women, the voices of women must be heard. I am heartened by the parliamentary vote taken in the State of Kuwait on May 16, 2005. There is more to be done; Kuwait must take the lead in the Gulf and do more.

I commend the State of Kuwait for acceding to CEDAW. I recommend that Kuwait take the measures CEDAW sets out in its General Recommendation No. 23 on women in political life and ensure ``that women understand their right to vote and how to exercise it'' and ``that barriers to equality are overcome, including those resulting from illiteracy, language, poverty and impediments to women's freedom of movement.'' Kuwait must work as it did to promote this change in its voting law, to change the cultural perception of women and their place in Kuwaiti women in society.

It is my hope that the Crowley Resolution will give the State of Kuwait the recognition of having accepted a basic principle of democracy, that the women of Kuwait have the same right to vote as the men of Kuwait.

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