Egypt: Arab Women's Civil Rights in Marrying Foreigners

In Egypt, as in most of the Arab world, according to Shari'a, children born to women who marry foreigners often endure a painful awakening that they are not like other citizens. In every country except for Tunisia, in fact, they are nor considered citizens at all.  

Women's organizations across the Arab world have taken up this issue and highlight the demand for sweeping new citizenship laws, arguing that the existing ones discriminate against women and wreak untold damage on children. Last year 2000 women marched in the streets of Beirut demanding amongst other things, changing this discriminatory law.

Iman Bibars, director of the Association for the Enhancement and Development of Women, a group trying to change the laws in Egypt says: "It is very tribal, which is why Arabs in many countries are against changing it. Women belong to the tribe, so if you go to another tribe to marry, you are no longer one of us."

"The backward mentality prefers that the family be linked to the men, under his control, so that he is the person who gives them their status in the society," Says Asma Kheder, a lawyer working to change Jordan citizenship laws. "If children feel that their mothers cannot provide them with the same protection as their fathers, then the whole status of women will remain less important."

Opponents of the restrictions hope that the Egyptian efforts will succeed because it could influence the rest of the region. Although the problem has been recognised for some time, women's groups say they are pushing the debate now since globalisation is increasing the number of such marriages.

Children in Egypt of foreign fathers cannot go to public school or state universities for free, are barred from certain professional schools like medicine or engineering even if they are willing to pay, and cannot get jobs without residency and work permits for foreigners.

Opponents of the restrictions want to argue that the law violates the constitution, which guarantees equal rights for all Egyptians. The foreign wives and children of Egyptian men are given citizenship automatically. They are focusing less on the issue of women's rights than on the problems children face. "There is always resistance to changing any law that has to do with women," Says Rabea Naciri, a Moroccan lawyer. "I think the question of nationality might face fewer problems because it also affects the children." Young adults born of foreign fathers say their biggest problem is feeling like strangers in the only place they really know.