Sudanese Women and Elections: Arguments of Exploitation and Empowerment (1.2)
Study published on the www dot ikhtyar dot orgs website
Translated by moatinoon
Past and current Sudanese womens political participation:
Over 50 years of Sudanese womens experience participating in the electoral process at the voting or running level, there have been many developments in favor of womens political empowerment, but in contrast some of these developments have caused debate about their effectiveness and sometimes about their inconsistency with womens rights.
Women in Sudan gained the right to vote early in 1953, although it was partly limited to educated women and graduates, but after the 1964 revolution against military rule, which women contributed to its overthrow through trade unions and student unions led by the Sudanese Womens Union, women gained their full political rights, related to the right to vote and to stand in all constitutional and sovereign positions.
Pioneer Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, the first Member of Parliament in 1965, and from her seat proving that the qualitative presence of women in decision-making positions is more important than quantitative, she was able with her strong personality and ability to mobilize support and exploit the moment of progressive transformation in the post-military era. It lobbied for laws protecting womens civil and political rights. in addition to the right to vote and to stand for election. The First Parliament was able to guarantee the right to equal pay, maternity leave, breastfeeding and equal opportunities in employment and education, through laws that eliminated discrimination against women in those areas in the Sudan. It laid the foundations for womens freedom and enabled Sudanese women to move towards political, economic and social empowerment.
In the most recent elections in the Sudan in April 2015, womens participation in parliament reached 30%, which is in line with the global recommendations contained in the outcomes of the Beijing Conference. Sudanese women are thus among the 11 countries in the world that have achieved this global goal.
On the other hand, womens participation in the voting process has remained higher than that of men over the past 10 years, with some estimates suggesting that the proportion of women voting in 2010 elections has exceeded the 60%. Although statistics and figures in the Sudan are scarce, similar estimates confirm that the proportion of women who voted in the 2015 elections is estimated at 56.3%. Womens control of voting centres in the elections has topped the headlines of electoral coverage in the past years. It is a phenomenon that has generated much debate about this right and the effectiveness of this large participation of women, most importantly the motivation and awareness of women voters of the importance of exercising this right.
Sudanese women and the struggle for rights:
Many recent studies on the womens movement in the Sudan have focused on researching womens struggle for social equality, given the challenges posed by the state Islamization practised by the regime in the Sudan in the last quarter century. In contrast to relative progress in womens political and economic rights, the social rights and personal freedom of women and participation in the public sphere remain the fields of struggle of Sudanese women, which have not been able to win most of their battles to date.
The Family Law, also known as the Muslim Personal Rights Law, significantly limits womens freedom to choose a husband and divorce, and still allows early marriage. Sudanese law has so far failed to criminalize excision, which continues to be practised at rates of up to 86% in most age groups.
The most rights-based law that has created many clashes between womens rights groups and the Sudanese system is the Public Order Act or the so-called Community Security Act, which restricts the freedom of clothing, movement and personal relations.
Despite some recent amendments to the Sudanese Criminal Code in early 2015 and the change of certain articles to ensure that women are protected from sexual harassment even in a limited manner, and the attempt to separate adultery from rape in the drafting of the law, Sudanese women continue to suffer in daily reality from arrest, flogging and constant humiliation when walking on the street, working, in school or even places of worship. Some statistics estimate that in 2008 alone, 45 thousand women were flogged under the Public Order Act.
Political situation in the Sudan and frameworks for womens participation:
Against the background of the Sudanese political situation, armed conflicts are a fertile ground for grave violations of womens rights, including crimes of mass rape and genocide, which have made the Sudanese President wanted by the Criminal Court for crimes against humanity since 2009. Unfortunately Al-Bashir remains President of the Sudan and has even been elected by 98%, with a majority of votes being women. This is a gross contradiction that casts doubt on the importance of reconsidering Sudanese womens participation in the electoral process, at the voting and election levels. But first, we must highlight the context of Sudans political and social mobility, which fuels these contradictions. On the political side, the Sudan has ruled dictatorial military powers for most of its post-colonial age.
The last quarter century was the worst, especially as the current military dictatorship accompanied by a fanatical, bloodthirsty Islamist project that provoked wars in all directions of the country from east to west to south.
On the other hand, historically marginalized groups that suffer from political exclusion have risen, as they differ ethnically, religiously and culturally from the Sudans ruling Islamist ethnicity since independence. Those uprisings, which included Darfur in the west, the Nuba Mountains in the centre-west, Beja in the east, southern tribes in southern Sudan and Blue Nile, were a reaction to the ongoing repression and also to the regimes exclusionary jihadism under the banner of Islam since 1989.
The regimes attempt to Islamization and Arabization the Sudanese people led to the choice of southerners to secede from the rest of the Sudan in 2011. As a result, the other upward parts that now bear arms against the regime in Khartoum are also considering options for secession under the Sudanese regimes intransigence.
This fragmented reality is the result of a long historical process of power conflict in the Sudan, which has been linked to the entry into the country of Islam and Arabs, thus excluding African ethnicities from positions of power and marginalizing them culturally and socially, because of religion, colour and language, among others reasons, driven by the elite who ruled the Sudan and tried to forcibly Islamization and Arabization its people.
Under these complex and difficult-to-understand complexities, even the Sudanese themselves, the political process is under the control of a masculine Islamist and military authority, especially under the existing regime. The progressive and secular forces of some civil society organizations and some left-wing parties in the Sudan are under pressure from the lack of liberties and the almost non-existent public sphere. Consequently, the early victories in womens rights achieved by pioneer Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim under the dome of Parliament and alone 50 years ago, 112 women have been unable to achieve a small fraction of them over the past 10 years.
Women as candidates and deputies. Cute and numerical increase:
In 2005 year, the international community was able to reach an agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), which has been fighting in areas of the State of South Sudan currently, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile since the mid-1980s. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended a quarter-century of civil war in the Sudan.
In 2005, the Interim Constitution of the Sudan was promulgated, which in article 32 guarantees equality between women and men in the Sudan in explicit terms and in affirmative action for women. It was on this basis that the womens movement, through negotiation and lobbying, was able to reach out to the Womens Chat to participate in the legislature, which is included in the Electoral Code up to 25%, up to 03%, in 2014. After the secession of the South and its empty seats in Parliament containing 450 seats, 120 of which were reserved for women rose to 128 seats in the 2015 elections.
The period of implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was a period of prosperity for political mobility and womens rights groups, and women were able to mobilize and train thousands of women in voting and political participation, and to train women candidates who reached 8,772 in the 2010 elections. This is to fill womens seats in the national and state parliament.
There was controversy over the womens list, some favoured the open list and others, including the ruling party, the National Congress favoured a closed list of women. Opposition women protested against the closed list as limiting womens opportunities for equal competition. More important than numbers and proportions, however, were the objectives of womens participation in Parliament, which were to strive intensively to raise the voice of women within decision makers, in order to change laws on women and their rights. However, it appears that those goals were not shared by all Sudanese women.
Effectiveness of womens parliamentary role:
From the backdrop of Sudans ambiguous political situation, dictatorial governments have always sought legitimacy for themselves, especially since they all came through military coups d état, starting with the rule of General Abboud in 1958-1964, General Nimiri in 1985-1969, and then the current ruling General Al-Bashir in 1989.
This legitimacy was the manufacture of mass nationalist parties governing the dominant one-party grip of what was called the Socialist Party under Nimiri, and now the National Congress Party of the Muslim Brotherhood of Bashir. Those parties had built a democratic play to gain international legitimacy, holding fabricated elections and creating mock parliaments, so that women were heroes in those political plays.
Womens participation in parliamentary representation through growing Côte dIvoire and in State functions in the dictatorships of the Sudan is noteworthy. Under Nimiri, pioneer Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim was imprisoned and the Sudanese Womens Union was blocked, but in contrast, under Nimiri there was the first female minister in the Sudan, and even the number of women parliamentarians rose to 15.
Although women during that period were able to affirm and incorporate certain rights relating to work and maternity leave as laws, they remained far from participating in decision-making under a repressive patriarchal system, through which they were unable to achieve achievements in the areas of social rights which are linked to the limitations of Islamic legislation, particularly in family and personal rights laws.
Under the current Islamic State regime, women belonging to the ruling party under the dome of Parliament went beyond silence on the rights of digested women to uphold laws that preserve womens injustice, such as laws on the age of marriage and the refusal to press for ratification of the CEDAW Convention. Some women parliamentarians also stood against the 2010 Child Protection Bill, which prohibits female genital mutilation, despite other women parliamentarians participation in the law industry belonging to the ruling party itself.
In this ambiguous picture, political divisions, power conflicts and armed conflicts have strongly affected the attitudes of women represented by Sudanese women in the States legislative and executive organs. Male power, dominated by dictatorial regimes and linked to the Islamic orientations of the ruling elites, seems to continue to curb womens capacity within and outside power and constrain their ability to make positive changes in the status of Sudanese women.
With high rates of poverty among women reinforced by armed conflicts resulting in the displacement of 4 million people, mostly women and children, Sudanese women, especially women leaders at the levels of power, opposition and civil society, are increasingly challenged. However, the deep division among Sudanese society, between a militant Islamist authority supported by militant fundamentalist forces, and a split opposition between leftist progressive secularism and Islamo-Arabic based on religious and tribal communities, and armed resistance movements linked to ethnic and cultural marginalization, has led to this divisions transition to the feminist movement.
This fragmentation of perspectives on womens issues, the confused political situation and extreme poverty has placed the Sudan at the top of the list of African and Arab States on gender equality in most areas, particularly economic empowerment, personal rights, participation in the public sphere and decision-making.
Despite the long history of the womens movement in the Sudan, there is doubt about achievements in the field of political rights that may have led to the neglect of social and personal rights, thus weakening womens efforts to work to change the male culture of society, arguing that it will happen automatically after women reach decision-making positions. The aim of womens substantial representation in Parliament was to bring about a profound change in laws or policies towards women, which appears to have occurred only at levels of formal participation in power and other levels of possibly education and employment. Aspects of poverty, personal rights, gender equality in economic opportunities, the empowerment of the poorest women, the prevention of various forms of sexual violence and the elimination of discrimination against women in the public sphere remain taboo, especially for women leaders of the ruling party in the Sudan, who represent 90% of women parliamentarians according to the 2015 and 2010 elections.
Source:
www dot ikhtyar dot org
