‘Gov’t looking into citizenship rights issue’

AMMAN — The government is looking into a long-standing demand to grant citizenship rights to Jordanian women married to foreigners, according to an activist.

Nimat Habashneh, who is heading a campaign to lobby the government to amend the Citizenship Law, on Monday, said they received positive signals from officials.

“We met with officials at the Prime Ministry and they informed us that they sent a memo to the interior ministry to consider granting us civil rights,” she told The Jordan Times.

According to Habashneh, the memo stressed that steps should be taken to “ease the burden on families who are suffering from this discrimination”.

The main demand of the group is issuing a new Citizenship Law that would consider a newborn Jordanian if either the father or the mother is Jordanian.

Another demand was to include the word “gender” in Article 6 of the Constitution.

Female activists had received assurances from the Royal Committee on Constitutional Review panel members that the word “gender” would be included in Article 6 of the Constitution, which stipulates that “there shall be no discrimination between Jordanians as regards to their rights and duties on grounds of race, language or religion”.

However, the word was excluded from the final draft that was handed to His Majesty King Abdullah, and observers say the reason was “political”.

Activists have stressed the importance of having the word “gender” included, as “it will make all articles in the Constitution clear and nondiscriminatory, and ensure justice for Jordanian women”.

The exclusion of the word “gender” also means that “Jordanian women cannot file lawsuits at the projected constitutional court to demand their full citizenship rights,” they noted.

Habashneh, who is the founder of a Facebook page that drums up support for women’s demands, told The Jordan Times that the government said they “will inform them of the progress of the memo sometime this week”.

The government spokesperson was unavailable yesterday to comment on the issue.

The group also wants the government to lift Jordan’s reservations on Article 9 (2) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which calls on member countries to give women the same citizenship rights as men.

Activists have been calling on the government to amend the Citizenship Law to allow Jordanian women to pass on their nationality to their children and husbands, a privilege that is only granted to Jordanian men married to foreigners.

Moreover, they repeatedly urged the government to ensure equality in the law, since the women married to foreigners have to shuttle between police stations and health centers every year to obtain security clearances, residency permits and medical reports for their foreign children.

Written By: Rana Husseini – The Jordan Times

Published: Jan 31, 2012 22:59

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