Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

The husband and children of a Jordanian woman can never become a citizen, and enjoys no basic rights in the country. Many of those shut out are Palestinian, which makes the law even more difficult to undo.

AMMAN – "Everyone has the right to a nationality," says the 15th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nima Habashney, who lives in Jordan, does not believe in this right anymore. In Jordan's Hashemite Kingdom, women married to foreigners cannot pass on Jordanian nationality to their husbands and children.

Legally speaking, their children and husbands do not exist – even if they've been living in Jordan all their life. They are tolerated, but they don't have any papers or social rights, making them more vulnerable than the nearly one million Palestinian refugees who live in Jordan with the United Nation's help.

It works differently for Jordanian men. The foreign wives and children of Jordanian men automatically receive citizenship. The law also stipulates that the children of a male Jordanian inherit their father's nationality no matter where they were born, even if they've never set foot in Jordan.

Habashney is a small but fearless woman. Born in Jordan, she began an uncertain struggle in 2004 against male domination in a very tribal society. She launched a campaign for human rights under the motto "We can live in the same society even if we don't share the same ideas."

Having married a Moroccan man (who has since died), Habashney has six children who are today denied Jordanian citizenship and the basic benefits that come along with it.

They don't have the right to work, to rent an apartment, or to access the public education and health systems. They cannot have a driver's license and do not enjoy basic civil rights.

For Habashney, her children's missing citizenship status has meant a lifetime of hurdles: in police stations, schools, health centers, public service bureaus. Everywhere, she wrestles with unsympathetic and sometimes aggressive civil servants. "Why did you marry a foreigner? You've made a big mistake, now you have to pay for it," they respond to her queries.

But Habashney understood that she was not the only Jordanian woman living with the same mix of ostracism, sexual discrimination and xenophobia. Indeed, it turns out there are nearly 66,000 women in the same situation, according to Jordan's Interior Ministry. Jordanian families have an average of 5.4 children, meaning overall the country's discriminatory citizenship laws could be affecting more than 350,000 people.

The scope of the situation may be exactly why the government has the laws it does. Jordan, a small country of 6.4 million people who are mostly of Palestinian descent, cannot afford to welcome so many new citizens. Habashney agrees that while Jordan's feudal and chauvinist structure are largely to blame for her family's stateless condition, demographic considerations influence government policy as well.

Others, however, accuse the government of exaggerating statistics in order to justify its arbitrary citizen laws. Interestingly enough, there were only 16,000 women officially in Habashney's situation in 2004.

"It's a human rights and discrimination issue, not a political issue," says Nermeen Murad, who heads the information center of Jordan's King Hussein Foundation, a humanitarian organization.

And the Queen?

The government claims that most women in Habashney's situation are married to Palestinians, who – if they were allowed Jordanian citizenship – would be all the more encouraged to flee Gaza or the West Bank of the Jordan River. In many cases, says Habashney, Palestinians actually defend the law. "They tell me: 'By emptying Palestine, you play Israel's game," she says. Never mind that most foreign husbands of Jordanian women are actually Egyptian.

In 2002, Jordan's Queen Rania announced that the government was considering giving Jordan women the right to pass their nationality to their children. But the move provoked an outcry among tribes who are the backbone of the Jordan monarchy. An amendment was published to make people forget the incident, but it was too late, and since then, the Transjordanians (those born in Jordan of Jordan extraction) grew more suspicious of the Queen, who is of Palestinian descent.

Jordan's complicated relationship vis-à-vis Palestine, it seems, is the real stumbling block. Since 2003, several ministers have stated that the issue of Jordanian women married to foreigners will evaporate once the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved. Habashney isn't willing to wait.

"The Palestinian issue is not my problem. I worry about our kids who have no present and no future in this country," says Habashney. "We won't remain silent. We're going to speak and to demonstrate, we'll keep fighting."
 

Présents dans le ciel libyen, les Occidentaux se refusent à envisager une intervention militaire contre Damas.

DANS le monde arabe, vaut-il mieux être aujourd'hui un citoyen de Hama en Syrie ou de Benghazi en Libye ? Pour celui-ci, l'Otan mobilise ses chasseurs-bombardiers depuis cinq mois ; à celui-là, l'Occident a fait l'aumône, mercredi soir, d'une « déclaration présidentielle » du Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU. À l'évidence, le « droit d'ingérence » – concept inventé par les Occidentaux au début des années 1990 à la faveur de la fin de la guerre froide -, souffre d'un léger problème de « deux poids, deux mesures », de « double standard » comme on dit en anglais.

Pourtant, les similarités entre le sort des Syriens et celui des Libyens ne manquent pas. Depuis quarante ans, ces deux peuples arabes vivent sous la férule d'une dictature familiale issue d'un coup d'État militaire. À Damas, celui du général Hafez el-Assad (père de l'actuel président Bachar) date de 1970. À Tripoli, celui du colonel Kadhafi remonte à 1969. Après les révolutions réussies de Tunis et du Caire, les Libyens et les Syriens sont à leur tour sortis dans la rue, à partir du mois de février, pour demander des changements politiques. Ils ont été accueillis à coups de matraque, puis de fusil, puis de canon. Comme toujours dans l'histoire, l'exagération dans la répression a nourri une insurrection populaire.

Bombardement

Comparer la réaction de l'Occident aux deux situations libyenne et syrienne permet d'affiner les règles de fonctionnement auxquelles obéit le concept de « droit d'ingérence ». Les années 1990 nous avaient déjà appris qu'il s'agissait exclusivement de l'ingérence des grands pays dans les affaires des petits. On y avait vu un premier ministre britannique encourager, au printemps 1999, le bombardement par l'Otan des ponts de Novi Sad (ville danubienne au nord de la Serbie), afin d'inciter ce pays à abandonner le contrôle de sa province méridionale indépendantiste du Kosovo, puis, quelques mois plus tard, le même Tony Blair se précipiter à Moscou pour être le premier leader occidental à y baiser la babouche du nouveau tsar Poutine, lequel venait tout juste de procéder à la destruction quasi totale de la province russe indépendantiste de Tchétchénie, au mépris d'un accord de paix que son prédécesseur Eltsine avait signé en 1996. Au regard de la puissance de frappe de l'Otan, la Libye et la Syrie sont deux pays militairement insignifiants. Pourquoi est-on intervenu dans la première et non dans la seconde ? C'est là qu'il convient d'ajouter le concept de facilité. Le « droit d'ingérence » ne s'applique plus aujourd'hui qu'aux terrains réputés militairement faciles, où les interventions paraissent pouvoir se faire à bas coût humain – pour les Occidentaux, cela va sans dire. La Libye présente l'avantage d'être un pays désertique au ciel clair, où rien n'est plus facile que de détruire par des bombes guidées au laser une colonne de chars s'avançant sur la ville insurgée de Benghazi. De surcroît ce pays recèle d'immenses richesses énergétiques. Des esprits malveillants ont souligné que si cette terre de Bédouins n'avait pas eu de pétrole, personne ne se serait intéressé à elle.

La Syrie, c'est autre chose. Elle n'a pas de pétrole, mais elle jouit du soutien ancien d'un grand pays, qui est la Russie. Mercredi soir, Moscou s'est opposé à ce que le Conseil de sécurité aille jusqu'au stade de la « résolution », pour ne garder que le principe d'une « déclaration », module de second rang par lequel l'ONU a l'habitude de proférer une liste de voeux pieux ayant fait consensus. Le deuxième atout de la Syrie s'appelle le Liban. C'est l'instrument de chantage dont dispose Damas face à l'Occident. À tout moment, la Syrie a les moyens de déstabiliser ce petit pays démocratique, le plus occidentalisé des États membres de la Ligue arabe. C'est pourquoi le Liban est le seul des quinze membres du Conseil de sécurité à s'être abstenu lors du vote de mercredi soir. Comme l'exemple de la Corée du Nord nous l'a enseigné depuis longtemps, le droit d'ingérence s'arrête là où commencent les moyens de chantage à l'égard de l'Occident.

Alain Juppé avait parfaitement conscience de tout cela lorsqu'il s'adressa hier à la presse, à l'occasion d'une cérémonie de remise d'un don de l'État à la Croix-Rouge, afin de secourir les réfugiés de Somalie frappés par une famine d'exceptionnelle ampleur.

Réfugiés de Somalie

L'acheminement des secours n'est pas chose facile dans une zone où il n'y a pas d'État depuis un quart de siècle, et qui est en grande partie contrôlée par des bandes de « chebab » islamistes. Le ministre des Affaires étrangères a rappelé l'échec de l'intervention militaire « humanitaire » occidentale de 1992 en Somalie. Le terrain s'y révéla beaucoup plus compliqué que prévu et, à leurs premiers morts, les Occidentaux s'enfermèrent dans leurs bases, avant de déguerpir du pays.

Il n'est donc pas surprenant que, sur la Syrie, M. Juppé ait souligné que « jamais personne n'y avait envisagé d'intervention militaire » . Ayant en tête la Somalie – mais aussi sans doute l'Irak et l'Afghanistan -, le ministre a dit : « l'Occident ne sait pas faire de miracles ! » Réaliste, il n'en attend pas non plus du régime de Damas. Appelé à commenter le décret publié hier par le président Bachar, qui institue le « multipartisme » , M. Juppé a vu dans ce geste « un peu d'ironie, voire de provocation » . « Il ne s'agit pas d'avoir des décrets, mais des actes ! C'est d'un changement total de politique dont on a besoin en Syrie ! » , a conclu l'heureux successeur, au Quai d'Orsay, du docteur Bernard Kouchner...
 

It is hard to say for sure who took down the portrait of the revolution's most famous martyr, Mohamed Bouazizi, from its perch atop a garish gold statue on the street where he set himself on fire, touching off a season of revolt across the Arab world. One man said unnamed counter-revolutionaries did it, and another man said it was damaged by rain.

Mr. Bouazizi's neighbors say it was taken down in disgust several weeks ago, after his mother and siblings left Sidi Bouzid, an act the neighbors considered a betrayal. Their anger stemmed from rumors that the family had accepted large sums of money to move to a fancy villa in Tunis. But more than that, they said, they were furious at being left behind, in a place with no jobs, money or hope, without the famous Bouazizis to give voice to their despair.

''She abandoned us, and nothing here changed,'' said Seif Amri, 18, a neighbor, speaking of Mr. Bouazizi's mother, Manoubia Bouazizi.

It is a measure of the deep frustration in Sidi Bouzid that a few people have lashed out at the town's favorite son. That anger is misplaced, most residents say, attributing the lack of progress here to the transitional government, which has moved slowly to address one of the revolution's central complaints — youth unemployment — especially here in the towns of central Tunisia, where the uprising began.

The bitterness here stands in stark contrast to a guarded optimism elsewhere in Tunisia about the progress of the revolution, and it threatens to undermine the gains: Several times in the last few months, disputes over jobs have led to deadly episodes of violence.

Analysts say the government's response has been inadequate, consisting mainly of a cash handout program. They also say some ministers have resisted pushing for large-scale government projects that would create short-term jobs, in favor of waiting for the market to correct the problems.

''There hasn't been enough provided or offered,'' said Mongi Boughzala, an economics professor at the University of Tunis. ''The few programs that came were late or insufficient. Young people expected something immediately. They expected that after taking this revolutionary step, there would be some return, in terms of jobs but also recognition.''

''A young person who says 'I want a job, I am fed up with being marginalized, and this is not something I can bear anymore,' does not care whether it's the fault of the government or the market,'' he added.

In Tunisia, as in Egypt, the optimism fueled by a popular uprising, has crashed into the cold reality that life has not quickly improved, and in many cases, has even grown more challenging as economies stall and interim leaders struggle to build a new system. In Tunisia, youth unemployment was high even before the revolution — as high as 30 percent, economists say. But Tunisia's economy was badly hit in the months after the uprising and is expected to eke out only modestly positive growth this year. A crippled tourism industry and the burdens of coping with refugees from the war in neighboring Libya have worsened the country's financial picture and its employment problems.

Young people in the region say the government has responded with empty pledges of help and deaf ears. Nabil Hajbai, a local business owner who runs a local nonprofit for youth called Karama, said eight ministers visited Sidi Bouzid about two months ago and ignored a plan presented by local leaders with possible solutions to the unemployment problem, including ideas for fixing the region's infrastructure and ideas for new factories.

''They promised a lot,'' Mr. Hajbai said. ''That's why people have lost hope. The government didn't do anything in this area. They want people to calm down first.''

''The people want the government to act, first,'' he added. ''Or at least to have a plan.''

In other places, specific promises have raised expectations and then led to recriminations — or civil disobedience. About 75 kilometers, or 50 miles, from Sidi Bouzid, in Kassrine, unemployed teachers have been staging a sit in for almost two months, demanding that the Labor Ministry follow through on an April pledge to hire 3,000 teachers within weeks. To date, the teachers said, 190 teachers have been hired.

They occupied the ground floor of the local Communist party. They had wanted to take over the local employment office, but it was burned down during the uprising. The teachers' complaints were not new: In a corner of their room, Zuhayar Arhimi, 38, was on the fourth day of a hunger strike. As he collapsed in the heat, his colleagues said he had been unemployed since he graduated from college, in 2003.

Kassrine suffered heavy losses during the January uprising, when 46 local people were killed. The largest local employer is a paper factory, and like other towns in the region, people find seasonal work in agriculture, making about $5 a day. Graffiti on the road out of Kassrine reads: ''Cowards don't make history.''

Samir Rhimi sat on the train tracks on the outskirts of town, watching two men scavenging for plastic, and food for their animals, in a filthy ditch. ''If there is no development in this region,'' Mr. Rhimi said, ''there will be no stability in the country.''

Last week, the authorities imposed a curfew in Sidi Bouzid, after violent clashes between the army and protesters left a 14-year-old boy dead. The protests were directly not about unemployment. People gathered in a show of solidarity with demonstrators who had clashed with the police in Tunis a few days before, but in Sidi Bouzid's current climate, the protest quickly escalated as youths threw gasoline bombs at soldiers, who fired their weapons.

Afterward, there were familiar complaints of neglect.

''Nobody came to explain what had happened,'' said Said Hajlawi, whose son Thabit was killed. ''The governor said sorry for the loss of your son,'' he said.

The Bouazizi family did not move to a fancy villa, though their one-story home, tucked in an alleyway in the Tunis neighborhood of La Marsa, is bigger than their cramped house in Sidi Bouzid. The front yard has a pumpkin patch, and a lemon tree, and the six children still share rooms. The family pay $200 a month in rent to the landlord who lives upstairs.

Their journey repeated a well-worn path in Tunisia, made by thousands of people every year, from a poor inland town to the more prosperous coast. ''It's much better than Sidi Bouzid,'' said Samia Bouazizi, 20, Mohamed's sister. ''We were tired,'' she said. ''We were tired.''

She said that claims the family received money were ''lies.'' So was the contention that the Bouazizis had forgotten their roots. ''We speak up for the town every chance we get,'' she said. She had no explanation for wild rumors that had followed her family, except one.

''Envy,'' she said. ''Envy.''