After electing first women MPs this year, we have more good news from Kuwait. A constitutional court has declared that the law requiring women to obtain consent from their husbands for obtaining a passport is in violation of the constitutional guarantees of freedom and gender equality.
Kuwait Sky on Fire (cc) Kuw_Son
A translation of Middle East Online at Meedan.net says:
The highest court in the Gulf state, whose rulings are final, abrogated an article in the 1962 passports law that prevented a woman from getting her own passport without her husband’s prior approval.
And in the perfect completion to the story, BBC reports that Aseel al-Awadhi, one of the new women MPs:
welcomed the passport law ruling as a “victory for constitutional principles that puts an end to this injustice against Kuwaiti women.”
WLP’s partners in the Middle East are actively engaged in multi-year campaigns to amend nationality laws so women get the right to pass on their nationality to children and to reform family laws to support women’s equal rights in marriage, employment, housing, and travel. The ruling by the Constitutional Court of Kuwait is another milestone for these campaigns. And it is with many milestones like these that success stories such as Morocco’s reform of family law are written.