Charter of Libyan Women's Constitutional Rights

After a series of workshops and consultations on the constitution, held beginning in 2013, the Libyan Women’s Platform for Peace (LWPP) launches a Charter of Libyan Women’s Constitutional Rights. The LWPP has been working on building consensus about the constitution’s most controversial issues, such as the role of sharia and international conventions in the constitution, as well as charting women’s priorities and rights.

In November 2014, the Libyan Women’s Platform for Peace organized a roundtable of Libyan experts to discuss women’s rights in the constitution, as framed by Sharia versus the international conventions. The workshop convened a number of female civil society leaders, youth activists, judges, legal experts, academics, religious leaders from the League of Libyan Ulama and Al-Azhar, and the Head of the Civil Rights Committee in the Constitutional Drafting Assembly (CDA). A basic theme in the workshop was the possibility of reconciliation between Sharia and international conventions achieved by creating platforms of mutual understanding and common terminology between human rights and women’s rights activists and religious leaders. The workshop covered the theoretical Islamic issues, while also addressing Libyan legal and social contexts. The meeting concluded with the presentation of a set of recommendations constitutionalizing women’s rights in the Libyan Constitution, the bulk of which were adopted to form the Charter of Libyan Women’s Constitutional Rights.

The workshop was followed by another consultation meeting on the 14th of January where the LWPP again convened civil society activists and legal experts with the Head of the Civil Rights Committee in the CDA. Participants engaged in a critical (rights approach-based) reading of the draft constitution. Dr. Al-Badri commented, “What has come out is not a draft. It’s rather a compilation of proposals by the committee of the CDA.” He also highlighted that the committees’ proposals or chapters are conflicting. Thus declaring, "There is no homogeneity in this draft of the constitution." Meanwhile, the LWPP continued convening consultations with a diversity of female civil activists and lawyers from a wide spectrum of ideological and cultural backgrounds on the draft of the Charter of Libyan Women’s Constitutional Rights.

(From http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bcf9d28b94670ba8cd8c578b0&id=1cde66066a&e=dc133b08d4)