Tag: Jordan

Is Arab World Ignoring HIV/AIDS Risk to Women?

At a UNAids meeting held in Amman, Jordan, UNAids Associate Director Dr. Suman Mehta warned that Middle Eastern and North African countries are not doing enough to address HIV/AIDS among girls and women.

Mehta charged that Middle Eastern nations are not accurately disclosing the extent of HIV/AIDS infection in their countries. According to Mehta,

It is not a question of resources and funds, it is a political and social problem … officials are not revealing the extent of the problem, and the community does not talk openly about it.

. . .

Low prevalence in the region should not be an excuse for inaction… all countries start with a low prevalence but then it grows out of proportion.

There are currently an estimated 540,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS in the Middle East and North Africa, but Mehta noted there is still a strong social stigma to HIV/AIDS infection,

[That] not a single one [girl or woman] is coming forward to say ‘I am HIV-positive’ says something about the fear, the scare, the discrimination and stigma attached to AIDS.

Dr. Hind Khattab, an Egyptian public health specialist, echoed Mehta’s words, telling the BBC,

The most important thing to do is not to wait until we are in a dangerous situation and then do something. This is the right time and we have to say that our women are vulnerable — not only those who [behave riskily] or those who are the spouses of men who have risky behavior, but we are in a situation where many of our countries are [at] war or are being attacked and the women are really at risk.

Sources:

Aids threat grows for Arab women. Dale Gavlak, The BBC, February 23, 2005.

Meeting addresses social attitudes to HIV/AIDS. Jordan Information Center, February 2005

Jordanian Woman Granted Divorce

The BBC reports that a Jordanian woman recently became the first to receive a divorce under a new law that allows women as well as men to seek divorce.

Jordan used to allow only men to seek divorces — a fairly common legal restriction in most Muslim countries.

The law was changed earlier this year, however, to allow women to file for divorce provided the women first forfeit any right to any sort of financial compensation (the woman who won her divorce had to forego a dowry she had received from her husband when they were married).

Source:

Jordan woman ‘wins right to divorce’. The BBC, May 13, 2002.

Honor Killing Outrage in Jordan

The BBC reported yesterday that women activists in Jordan are outraged over yet another light sentence for a man convicted of an honor killing. In this case, a man murdered his daughter with “an implement similar to a meat cleaver” after he learned she had premarital sex. For this crime, the man was sentenced to only six months in jail.

Although the Jordanian government has claimed over the past few years that it wants to crack down on honor killings, so far it has been all talk.

Last July, for example, CBS reported on the case of Sirhan Abdullah. Abdullah’s 16-year-old sister, Yasmine, was raped. Yasmine feared for her life and so turned to police who placed her in protective custody. After forcing him to sign an agreement that he would not harm Yasmine, she was released to her father.

By his own account, Sirhan Abdullah waited only about 15 minutes after Yasmine arrived home before shooting her in the head four times. He spent six months in jail. Abdullah told CBS that he didn’t think his sentence was fair. According to Abdullah,

I shouldn’t have been in prison for a minute. If she had stayed alive, everyone in our family would have hung his head in shame.

A bill to set mandatory jail terms for honor killings was defeated by Jordan’s parliament in 2000, and a new proposed bill that would require at least a 5-year sentence for such murders has almost no chance of being enacted into law.

Sources:

Jordanian women fight ‘honour killings.’ Caroline Hawley, The BBC, January 23, 2002.

Honor Crimes. CBS News, July 14, 2001.

Stop Honor Killings

The other day I was reading a book by an academic feminist who argued, among other things, that the idea that there is a universal code of morality (i.e. there are just things that are plain wrong) is a white imperialist idea. Maybe, but I still have to say that honor killings are wrong and the relativists be damned.

What’s an honor killing? An honor killing is where a man kills a female relative if he suspects she’s committed a sexual transgression, and in some cultures such violence is not only ignored but actually sanctioned by the legal code.

In Jordan, for example, two women were recently murdered in honor killings. In one case a father killed his adult daughter after she was released from jail after serving time for a sexual relationship her step brother. In the second case, a woman accused of having extramarital sex was murdered by her brothers. Of course both men and women kill each other in the United States and other parts of the world over sexual infidelity, but here’s the kicker — in Jordan the penal code specifically exempts a man from punishment if he kills a female relative to atone for her sexual transgressions.

According to the BBC (Jordanian women killed ‘for honour’), in Jordan about 25 women a year are murdered this way, and their murderers are protected by law from prosecution. That’s a rather large figure in a country of less than 5 million people.

A small group of reformers tried to get the Jordanian parliament to overturn the law protecting honor killings but failed. A protest against the law drew only a few thousand people.

And Jordan isn’t alone in having a problem with honor killings. A report released by Amnesty International last September claimed that hundreds of honor killings take place in Pakistan every year. Although honor killing is murder under Pakistan’s penal code, juries tend to acquit men who kill their female relatives for reasons of honor and judges tend to give light sentences for those men who say they killed to preserve their family’s honor.

Maybe it’s just the Western imperialist in me, but honor killing is downright barbaric and should be outlawed everywhere in the world.