Inside The Middle East
SHOW #64
HOSTED BY SCHAMS ELWAZER FROM SANAA, YEMEN
MARKING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
SAUDI CHILD BRIDES – NIC ROBERTSON IN RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA
Encouraged by a wary phone call from a distressed mother of two child brides, Nic Robertson looks at the issue of child brides in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom's Grand Mufti recently ruled that girls as young as ten can be married. Rights activists have turned to the internet and are saying that Saudi women are becoming very frustrated with this state of affairs. But even public debate is failing to sway the ultra-conservative religious authorities, leaving many despairing that this is a tradition that will not disappear anytime soon.
WOMEN BATTLE FOR CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS – SCHAMS ELWAZER IN BEIRUT, LEBANON
"The citizenship law is the most discriminatory of all our laws because it simply and crudely state that men can and women cannot," says Lebanese women's rights activist Lina Abou Habib. Currently only five Arab countries allow women to pass their nationality on to their children. We meet men and women – in some cases 2nd or 3rd generation born and raised in Lebanon – who are still considered foreigners in the only land they've ever known. Activists say it's patriarchal and unconstitutional because it treats women as second-class citizens. Politicians opposed to changing the law say it risks unsettling the demographic-confessional balance that is at the heart of the Lebanese socio-political system.
HONOR CRIMES - ARWA DAMON IN AMMAN, JORDAN
In Iraq's Kurdish north, young girls with 75% burn to their bodies lie in hospital beds, quivering in pain, fear and distress. In Amman, Jordan the women and young girls at a shelter outside the city are too frightened to appear on camera. They are a handful of the women across the Middle East who are victims of a disturbing centuries-old phenomenon known as honor crimes or honor killings - the murder, mainly of females, by their male relatives in the name of preserving the families' honor - crimes that often go punished. But thanks to the efforts of some activists, some Middle Eastern societies are slowly finding themselves forced to confront and deal with this injustice.
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