Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa - Qatar

Population: 600,000
GDP Per Capita (PPP): $19,844
Economy: Mixed capitalist-statist
Ranking on UN HDI: 47 out of 177
Polity: Traditional monarchy
Literacy: Male 84.9% / Female 82.3%
Percent Women Economically Active: 42.1%
Date of Women's Suffrage: 1999
Women's Fertility Rate: 3.5
Percent Urban/Rural: Urban 91% / Rural 9%

COUNTRY RATINGS FOR QATAR

Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice: 2.0
Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person: 2.1
Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity: 2.8
Political Rights and Civic Voice: 1.7
Social and Cultural Rights: 2.5

(Scale of 1 to 5: 1 represents the lowest and 5 the highest level of freedom women have to exercise their rights

INTRODUCTION

Qatar is a monarchy governed by an emir who exercises power with few restraints. After Qatar gained independence from Britain in 1971, Emir Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani ruled the country until 1995, at which time his son Sheikh Hamad al-Thani deposed him in a bloodless coup. Since accession to power, Sheikh Hamad has taken gradual steps to introduce political, social, and economic reforms, some of which have benefited women. In 1999, women were granted equal suffrage, and the country held the first elections for its 29-member municipal council. Approximately 97 percent of voters approved a new constitution in a referendum on April 29, 2003. The new constitution formally grants women equality and also provides for a legislative advisory council comprising 30 elected and 15 appointed members. In April 2003, the first woman cabinet minister was elected in Qatar's second municipal council elections.

Qatar is a small, petroleum-rich Arabian Gulf state with vast natural gas reserves and a high per capita GDP of $19,844. The state religion is Islam, and the majority of Qatar's residents are Sunni Muslims. The country has a population of approximately 600,000, of whom an estimated 150,000 are citizens. Noncitizens, who comprise about 75 percent of the local population, are mostly foreign workers and their families who come from South Asia and other Arab countries. Foreign workers on short-term employment contracts represent about 85 percent of the workforce. The rights and state benefits afforded to Qatari citizens such as free education and health care, are not extended to the country's noncitizen population.

Rights of assembly and association in Qatar are limited. Public protest and political demonstrations are rare. All nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) require permission from the state to operate. Political parties, trade groups, women's groups, and human rights groups have been refused licenses. However, the state did establish the Supreme Council for Family Affairs, with its subsidiary body, the Women's Affairs Committee, in December 1998. In 2002, the emir decreed the establishment of the National Committee for Human Rights, which aims to implement the goals of international human rights charters and to report and investigate human rights violations.

Oil wealth has provided the Qatari government with the resources to build and staff high-quality health and educational facilities and to establish an extensive welfare system for its citizens. The female literacy rate and life expectancy have increased over the past few generations, and women are well represented in the education sector. Oil revenues have also provided Qatari women with a growth in professional employment opportunities and a lessening of household responsibilities, as a result of the increased economic ability to hire domestic staff. Nevertheless, with increasing numbers of Qatari households employing domestic workers, a new class of exploited foreign domestic, predominantly female, workers has developed.

While some women have benefited from the recent reforms in Qatar, women in general continue to face legal and societal problems in a number of areas. Women's rights and freedoms in the public sphere, whether economic, political, or social, remain limited. The lack of protections against discrimination, increases in polygamy, restrictions on the freedom of movement, mistreatment of foreign domestic workers, and limits on the freedom to organize and advocate for their rights still pose obstacles for women. There are no laws against domestic violence and no shelters or women's groups offering assistance to victims.

Gender-disaggregated statistics and studies on women's issues, particularly with respect to health, the economy, and the environment, are scarce in Qatar. The lack of information serves as an obstacle to many, including planners, policy makers, and women's rights advocates.

NONDISCRIMINATION AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE

Qatar's constitution guarantees women equal rights as citizens: Article 35 explicitly stipulates, "[A]ll people are equal before the law. There shall be no discrimination on account of sex, origin, language or religion." While Qatar's constitution provides general protection to Qatari women from gender-based discrimination, no formal mechanisms exist whereby women can file complaints about discrimination. The government has not acted to ensure that women are not in fact discriminated against and has not taken measures to inform women of their legal rights and protections. In addition, most rights in the constitution (among them, rights related to employment and property ownership) apply only to Qatari citizens, a fact of great importance in Qatar, where the vast majority of residents are noncitizens.

The law treats women as full and equal persons. However, in practice, most women living in Qatar are not always treated as equals. The implementation of Islamic laws in Qatar is often discriminatory against women, particularly the laws that govern inheritance and child custody.

Qatari citizenship is difficult to acquire. A 1961 law grants citizenship only to descendants of those who resided in Qatar before 1930. While some non-nationals have received citizenship, such exceptions are very rare and usually occur as a result of specific circumstances (e.g., soccer players admitted to make the country eligible for international competitions). Discrimination in favor of Qataris, especially citizens with power and influence, such as members of the large ruling family, occurs in all spheres of economic and social life.

Qatar's judicial system is composed of two sets of courts (unified in 1997 under the umbrella of a Higher Judicial Council): Islamic (Shari'a) courts that implement Islamic law, and non-Islamic courts. The Islamic courts in Qatar have jurisdiction over only a narrow range of issues – primarily personal status law (roughly, family law and probate). While Shari'a law may grant overt preference to men in matters of the family, case outcomes are occasionally tempered by the fact that Hanbali (Qatar's dominant sect) practice allows for a high level of judicial discretion.

Qatar's interpretations of Islamic law deem the testimony of two women to be equal to that of one man. However, judicial discretion works to make the courts flexible in applying this rule, and the judge ultimately decides the credibility of witnesses. Women usually attend court proceedings in legal cases but are typically represented by a male relative or, increasingly, a (male) attorney, although women may represent themselves if they choose. Half of Qatar's judges are non-Qataris who are at-will employees who can be fired and consequently deported at any time, a circumstance that limits their independence. There are no women judges in Qatar. Only in the year 2000 did Qatari authorities grant the first woman, Haifa Al-Bakr, a license to practice law. While the number of women lawyers in Qatar is growing, their proportion within the legal profession and their work remain very limited.

Most foreign women laborers work as domestic workers in Qatar and have only moderate access to justice. These women are often isolated within households, where their employers may restrict their freedom of movement. While they do have some legal rights and appear before the same court system as Qatari citizens, fear of expulsion and job loss often prevents these workers from exercising what rights they technically possess. The state does very little to protect foreign women, especially domestic workers.

The Shari'a prohibits all forms of physical violence. However, the legal system often treats leniently those men who commit acts of violence against women who, in their view, behave immodestly or defy the man's authority. While "crimes of honor" are rare, the legal system treats convicted perpetrators lightly. In September 1999, Ali Said Al-Khayareen, a former government minister, murdered his two half-sisters for alleged sexual misconduct. He was released later that year. The maximum penalty for rape in Qatar is death, yet the Shari'a law in Qatar does not consider spousal rape a crime.

Article 36 of the constitution states that no one shall be arrested except under provision of the law. In practice, unjustified gender-based imprisonment and detention are rare. Prisons meet international standards, and women are held separately from men. The proportion of women in the prison population for the year 2000 was 11.8 percent.

At the end of 2003, Qatar remained one of only three Arab countries (with Oman and the UAE) that had not signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Qatar has signed very few international human rights conventions.

The government prohibits nongovernmental women's rights groups, in addition to most other types of associations, from forming or working freely to promote the status of women. Although the new constitution provides for freedom of association, in practice, the government has limited this right. All nongovernmental groups must apply for registration with the Ministry of Interior, which monitors their activities. It remains to be seen whether groups will be allowed to form once the constitution goes into effect fully, a change slated for 2005.

The only active women's group is governmental, the Supreme Council for Family Affairs, which is independent of other governmental structures and is under the directorship of the emir's wife, Shaikha Muza bint Nasir al-Misnad. Much of its work centers on advocacy for women and children. The council's Women's Affairs Committee has called for reform of the Personal Status Law, increased public awareness of women's issues, promoted women's sports, and generally advocated for a range of women's issues. As a result of the council's work, the age of marriage was raised from 14 to 16, women gained the right to divorce their husband without losing custody of their children, and divorced women became eligible to receive three years of alimony. The Supreme Council has further advocated hiring more women in top governmental decision-making positions. The Qatar Red Crescent Society also carries out gender-related work and particularly focuses on issues of welfare.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The government should ratify CEDAW, without reservations, and take steps to implement it locally by bringing national laws in conformity with CEDAW.
2. The government should ensure that new laws are consistent with constitutional guarantees of gender equality.
3. The government should clarify regulations and guidelines for establishing NGOs so that women activists can organize their efforts.
4. The government should appoint more women as judges.

AUTONOMY, SECURITY, AND FREEDOM OF THE PERSON

The state religion of Qatar is Islam, as interpreted by the conservative Wahhabi tradition of the Hanbali school of Islam. Women are largely free to practice their religion and beliefs. Article 50 of the constitution formally guarantees freedom of worship to all, and in practice this freedom has seen expansion in recent years. Although the national population is overwhelmingly Sunni, specifically Hanbali, the expatriate population includes a significant number of other religions. The current emir recently allowed for Christian worship, which had been banned in the past. In 1999, permission for the construction of Qatar's first church was granted. The government has since granted formal legal status to a number of Christian denominations (Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Coptic, and several Asian Christian denominations), in effect giving them permission to hold public services and providing them with registration numbers that allow them to open bank accounts and sponsor clergy for visas. The small number of predominantly Indian Hindus, Asian Buddhists, Iranian Baha'is, and Jews do not practice openly, but they do not face government harassment. Shi'a Muslims are allowed to practice their religion, but some public Shi'a ceremonies (such as self-flagellation) are banned.

Women have restricted freedom of movement. While foreign women may obtain a driver's license, Qatari women are required to have the permission of their male guardian (husband, father) to get a license and must prove that their daily life necessitates movement. Social norms restrict interactions between unrelated men and women, and areas of the public sphere such as workplaces and schools are largely segregated. Restaurants have family rooms for women and families, health clubs have ladies' hours, and banks have women's sections. These practices are enforced by social norms and tradition; Qatar has no religious police. Women are not legally required to have a male guardian's permission to travel abroad, but few women travel alone. Men can prevent female relatives from leaving the country by giving their names to immigration officers at departure ports. Employers often restrict the freedom of movement of non-Qatari women, particularly domestic workers, and their ability to travel abroad. It is not illegal for employers to withhold the passports of their workers. Employers must give consent before exit permits are issued to foreign workers wishing to leave the country.

The Supreme Council's Women's Affairs Committee recently reviewed Qatar's Personal Status Law and proposed amendments, some of which were accepted. In 2003, the Shari'a courts applied the principles of the draft Family Status Law, yet a revised law is expected to be adopted in the near future. Law in matters of personal status tends to discriminate against women, notably in cases of inheritance and child custody. In matters of divorce, women are typically granted custody of younger children, while fathers will gain custody of older children. In practice, once a boy reaches the age of seven and a girl reaches puberty, the father will usually be granted full custody if he so desires.

Qatari law allows a woman to seek a divorce by petitioning the court. The court will grant a woman a divorce only if she is able to prove that she can no longer continue to live with her husband. According to reports, women do not often employ this procedure. Women have the legal right to negotiate a marriage contract that may grant them greater rights than those guaranteed by law. Nonetheless, they do not have full and equal freedom to choose their marriage partner. Polygamy is quite widespread and accepted as a Qatar tradition.

The law prohibits forced or bonded labor, and Qatari women are protected from slavery and gender-based slavery-like practices to some degree. Yet, despite measures taken by the government, Qatar is a destination country for women who are trafficked and placed in situations of coerced labor. Domestic workers, particularly from Asia, often labor under conditions approaching involuntary servitude (long hours, withheld pay, restricted movement), and some are sexually exploited.

Article 36 of the constitution asserts that no one shall be subject "to torture or humiliating treatment. Torture is considered a crime and shall be punished by the law." Qatari women are generally free from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment; there were no reported incidents in 2003. However, no specific law protects women from domestic violence or abusive employers, and victims of such violence have little recourse. Foreign embassies occasionally provide shelter for domestic workers who have left employers due to abuse or for other reasons. Runaway domestics are also provided shelter in deportation centers by the Qatari government.

Protection from domestic violence is provided more by social networks, notably the tendency toward family endogamy (a cultural preference for cousin marriage) than by law. Thus an abuser married to his cousin would have to answer to his wife's parents: his own uncle and clan, who would probably come to her defense. As family standing is critical to economic and social access and success, this pressure can be formidable. Nonetheless, the topic of domestic abuse remains largely taboo, the extent of the problem is unknown, and women who lack such family support are at high risk.

Qatar is a rather safe society with low crime rates. Violence against women outside the home is rarely reported.

There are no independent women's rights groups working on domestic violence or immigrant women's rights issues in Qatar, and no organizations of women lawyers or independent legal aid groups operate in the country. In 2003, the wife of the emir helped to establish the Qatari Institution for the Protection of Women and Children. According to the government, the objectives of this institution are to "protect women and children from deviant practices in the home, in society, and in the workplace."

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The government should rescind the law requiring a male guardian's permission for a woman to obtain a driver's license and abolish rules that may prohibit women from traveling freely.
2. The government should increase the number of Qatari women employed in the police force and expand their role to include cases of domestic violence.
3. The government should work with women's rights advocates to develop services to support female victims of violence.
4. The government should work with women lawyers, universities, and the media to inform women about their legal rights, including rights in marriage.

ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Qatari women have the formal right to own land and property, and they enjoy full and independent use of their income and assets. Noncitizens, on the other hand, are not permitted to own property. Women do not enjoy equal rights to inheritance under the Shari'a. Qatar's inheritance laws grant wives half the amount of inheritance of male relatives. Non-Muslim wives will not inherit unless previous formal arrangements have been made to provide them with up to one-third of the total inheritance.

Women are legally allowed to enter into business and economic contracts and activities. However, a woman's participation in business activity that requires close contact with unrelated men will typically face family opposition. Women rarely engage in investment activities, although they are beginning to enter the business and investment market. A number of mechanisms have been established in recent years to support the participation of women in this sector, including the Women's Investment Company of Qatar and the Businesswomen's Club, which is a branch of the Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Qatari women have access to education at all levels and take full advantage of Qatar's free education system. Article 49 of the constitution states, "Education is the right of every citizen. The State shall endeavor to provide free and compulsory public education in accordance with the laws in force." Education is compulsory for all children up to the age of 18 or until the end of the intermediate level of schooling. Free education is not offered to Qatar's noncitizens, however. In 2003, women's literacy rates were 82.3 percent, a little lower than men's rate of 84.9 percent.

The country's educational system is segregated by gender; the University of Qatar has separate campuses for women and men. In 2002, women comprised 73 percent of the student population at the University of Qatar. The government has recently permitted branches of foreign universities to open in Qatar to provide modern education for both men and women.

Opportunities for women within the education system are still limited, however. Due to cultural and societal limits on a woman's ability to travel, females account for only 37 percent of the students who study abroad. Most specialized schools are limited to men; women are not allowed in specialized secondary schools or in the fields of engineering or law at the University of Qatar. Women generally enroll in the theoretical sciences and tend to graduate with similar skills. Consequently, one factor that contributes to women's high unemployment is that there is an oversupply of qualified women competing for positions in fields with little demand.

Women make up 14 percent of the total workforce and 26 percent of the Qatari national workforce; however, women's contributions to the economy are still predominantly under-reported because much of women's labor remains unpaid. While women have few legal restrictions on their right to choose a profession, in practice, cultural and family pressures have led the majority of employed women to work in the fields of education and health care. Nearly 100 percent of employed women are concentrated in the service sector. The diversity of career opportunities is expanding nonetheless. In 2003, Qatar graduated some 100 female police cadets and began to move toward creating the country's first female soccer team. Whether a woman can become a judge or an ambassador, however, is up to the emir, who makes appointments to such posts. Women filled only 4.7 percent of administration and senior management positions in 2001.

Qatar's newest labor law (Law No. 14 of 2004) is intended to provide for equality between men and women in rights arising from work relations. However, the law is ambiguous. Article 93 grants women the same wages as men for similar work, as well as the same training and promotion opportunities. Article 94, on the other hand, bans women from work that is "hard, hazardous, unsafe or morally harmful, or of other nature to be defined by Ministerial decision." It is still too early to predict how this new law will be implemented.

There are no laws to protect women from sexual harassment in the workplace and no complaint mechanisms for women to report such cases. Workers are not permitted to unionize or engage in collective bargaining, and the standards of work and protections provided for Qatari citizens are vastly different for noncitizens. Beginning in 1962, a series of restrictive labor laws granted many privileges to citizens, such as preference in hiring.

Qatari women do not always receive equal employment benefits to cover transportation and housing, but gender-specific protections in the workplace are generous. Employers are required to provide at least 50 paid days of maternity leave. In the public sector, female employees receive two hours of breaks a day for one year to breast-feed. State-employed Qatari women who have worked for more than four years can receive two-year leaves (the first paid, the second at half pay) on two occasions in their working lives to care for young children. The government (which employs the majority of women in the workforce) provides working hours that allow most mothers to be home after school if they desire. Most Qatari households employ a domestic worker who provides childcare along with many other household services. However, preschools are rare, and high-quality childcare is difficult to find. The Supreme Council is currently working on developing a kindergarten program. In practice, none of these benefits applies to non-Qatari domestic workers.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The government should increase the recruitment of women into more diverse and upper-level governmental positions, including all ministries.
2. The government should establish a mechanism for enabling women workers to report cases of discrimination and harassment.
3. The government should enact a clear law that protects all women in Qatar, citizens and non-citizens, from harassment in the workplace in both public and private sectors.
4. The government should ensure the right of all workers to accept and leave jobs at will, and it should publish and disseminate information in relevant languages to female foreign workers on their labor rights and basic human rights.

POLITICAL RIGHTS AND CIVIC VOICE

The right to peaceful assembly, for both men and women, is severely restricted in Qatar. Public demonstrations and political parties are banned. The government typically asserts that parties and demonstrations are not needed, as there is no political opposition. Political groups in civil society are not permitted to function openly; the government is selective in granting authorization and often disqualifies civil society groups that it deems overly political.

While formal censorship was lifted in 1995 and the Information Ministry abolished, considerable self-censorship is still exercised by reporters and editors. Local media, while critical of events outside the country, rarely tackle political, domestic, or women's issues. Most broadcast media are government-owned and reflect the official position. Foreign print media are monitored and censored for sexual content. Al-Jazeera satellite television, a private station heavily reliant on Qatari government subsidies, is vocal and critical in its coverage of the United States and other Arab states but practices considerable self-censorship when covering Qatari news. Al-Jazeera airs a number of programs on women's rights and women's global equality issues, in addition to covering the issues of displaced and refugee women, but the station does not highlight the domestic problems of Qatar's women migrant workers. Domestic politics and policy are usually avoided or presented in a positive light.

The constitution grants women the right to participate in competitive and democratic elections with full and equal suffrage. However, Qataris are at present restricted to electing municipal council members who can act only on a very narrow range of concerns. In 1999, the emir granted women suffrage by decree. Six women competed as independent candidates in the municipal elections of 1999, but none was elected. One female candidate, Muza al-Malki, speculated that female candidates had lost because they didn't win the women's vote, claiming that 80 percent of their votes came from men. In April 2003, the first woman was elected to public office as a member of the 29-member municipal council. No other elections have been held.

Women are not represented in the judiciary; no woman was granted a license to practice law until the year 2000. Most of Qatar's lawyers have been educated abroad; students seeking a degree in Western law must attend a university in another state. However, the Faculty of Shari'a Law and Islamic Studies at the University of Qatar now offers an undergraduate degree in Islamic law.

Women are increasingly gaining representation in the national government. In 2003, Shaikha bint Ahmad al-Mahmud was appointed Qatar's first woman minister of education, having served as under-secretary since 1996. The president of the University of Qatar and the dean of the Faculty of Shari'a Law and Islamic Studies are also women. Nevertheless, the representation of Qatari women in government remains thin, with nearly all important decision-making positions restricted to men. Only four Qatari women fill high-ranking posts, although substantially larger numbers of women have mid-level positions. Women's influence in governmental decision-making is largely limited to the fields of education and social affairs.

Women have the right to participate in local politics, and a number have run for local office. While there is no national parliament, the new constitution calls for a consultative Shura Council, with two-thirds of the membership to be elected. The emir has not yet announced a date for these elections. Women's political participation would be more meaningful were they allowed to run for genuinely legislative bodies (such as a national parliament). Nevertheless, women would then be likely to face increased and organized opposition to the expansion of women's rights from extremist Islamist groups. A more democratic and open political system is ultimately vital to the preservation and expansion of women's rights.

Access to the Internet has provided women with a new and broad source of information. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has set up a technology information center, which includes a women's unit, and in Doha, Internet cafes exist exclusively for women. At one time, Q-Tel, an Internet provider, had 10,000 subscribers, 30 percent of whom were believed to be female. Unfortunately, the restrictions on women's right to associate greatly hinder their ability to use information to empower themselves in their civic or political lives.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The government should continue to expand its policies and programs on women's political rights and facilitate women's equal access to all stages of the political process.
2. The government should allow the establishment of independent political parties to enhance a free and democratic political process in which women and men can benefit.
3. The government should establish an affirmative action plan to increase women's role in parliament, political parties, and government ministries.
4. The government should allow women to organize women's groups to work on political issues.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS

Qatar remains an insular society in which family life is central. For both men and women, little meaningful social, economic, or political life takes place outside the family. In the home, women retain important roles. They organize the daily routine and holiday family gatherings, and they play a central role in arranging marriages. Public life is customarily segregated by gender, with most public entities having separate times or space for men or for "families" (women and children). Although it is not compulsory, most women wear the hair-covering hijab and the black cloak-like abaya in public.

Qatar nationals have free access to a government-supported health-care system; noncitizens, on the other hand, are required to pay for services. Qatar's health-care system covers a range of health issues, including mental and dental care and a complete maternity care program. Women have significant freedom to make independent decisions about their health. The vast majority of women receive professional pre- and postnatal care. Employers of non-Qatari women, particularly domestic workers, sometimes infringe upon women's right to health care by restricting their freedom of movement.

With the permission of both parents, abortion is permitted in the first trimester if a physician determines that the pregnancy would cause harm to the mother's health or if the fetus has a serious, incurable physical or mental defect. Qatari society is pro-natalist, and women are typically pressured by their families to have children. Women's reproductive rights are rarely discussed in public; issues such as rape and even non-marital sex are seldom addressed; there is little information available on how resulting pregnancies are handled.

While it is not legally prohibited, few Qatari women or men live alone. Young women would be likely to face familial opposition and possibly male harassment if they tried to live on their own. Older widows, on the other hand, have greater freedom to live by themselves. Housing allowances available to male Qatari government employees are not generally available to women. The man is considered the head of household in Qatar and is therefore responsible for providing housing for his wife and the family.

Community life centers on the family. While women are able to participate in all matters related to the family (marriage, children's education, health care, housing), their ability to influence key decisions in the family remains unclear. The government does not interfere in family and community relations, and women may consequently face obstacles in seeking governmental assistance or support in cases of domestic violence or marital rape, neither of which is considered a crime.

Women work in both print and broadcast media in Qatar, employed as journalists, reporters, broadcasters, and producers. However, women have only recently gained access to jobs in the media, and their numbers in the field are modest. In 2002, the sector employed 279 Qatari women. Qatar University has established the Project for the Development of Media Training for Women in conjunction with UNESCO. Among the obstacles to women's participation in the media are the social customs that restrict women's work to a narrow field of careers. The media tend to portray women in stereotypical roles. There is also little coverage, particularly on international networks such as Al-Jazeera, of the problems of and restrictions on women's lives.

Little research has been conducted on the problem of poverty in Qatar. Information on the economic, social, and cultural problems of non-Qatari women is also not available, partly due to the lack of independent groups to investigate these issues.

Qatar's new constitution does not come into full effect until 2005. While many recent reforms have affected women positively, they remain unfamiliar and untested. Many reforms are closely associated with the activism of the emir's wife, Shaikha Muza, and may not survive in the absence of so high-placed and active an advocate. The very reforms that have provided women with important rights have come about not through democratic mechanisms but through decrees from the top. If the reforms are to endure, they must be institutionalized through democratic means, such as an elected national parliament that will outlive the current emir. Such a body, however, is more likely to favor restrictions on women's rights than the emir. In a society where social norms, not laws, are the source of most restrictions on women's lives, and where laws are often unknown, inconsistently enforced, and not subjected to any form of constitutional review, legal reforms alone will be of limited consequence.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The government should abolish laws that discriminate against women in housing and job-related benefits.
2. The government should expand the work of the Supreme Council for Family Affairs, and the government should allow independent women's groups to function, both to advocate for women's rights and to provide more protection for non-Qatari women.
3. The media in Qatar should focus on women's problems and their lack of equal rights.

AUTHOR: Jill Crystal is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Auburn University. She is the author of two books, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Kuwait: the Transformation of an Oil State (Westview, 1992), as well as several articles and book chapters.

NOTES

[Refworld note: source files did not contain inline references to these notes; they have been included to enable further reading and research.]

1. "Background Note: Qatar" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State, 2003); Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2003: Qatar (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 25 February 2004).

2. "Reply by the State of Qatar to the Questionnaire to Governments on Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and the Outcome of the Twenty-third Special Session of the General Assembly (2000)" (Doha: Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

3. AI Report 2003: Qatar (London and New York: Amnesty International [AI], 2003); Aman Daily News, 17 November 2002.

4. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

5. See Nathan Brown, The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), ch. 6.

6. "Qatar: Women in Public Life" (United Nations Development Programme, Programme on Governance in the Arab Region), www.pogar.org/countries/Qatar/gender.html.

7. Country Reports ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

8. See "Qatar," Freedom in the World 2003 (New York and Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2004); Country Reports ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

9. "Woman in Qatar gets the right to be lawyer for the first time," ArabicNews.com, 17 February 2000.

10. Country Reports ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

11. Country Profiles "Qatar" (Beirut: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [ESCWA], 2002), http://www.escwa.org.lb/ecw/index.asp.

12. "Prison Brief for Qatar" (London: International Centre for Prison Studies, 2004),

13. For a list of the human rights conventions Qatar is and is not signatory to, see "Ratification of International Human Rights Treaties – Qatar" (University of Minnesota, Human Rights Library, 2004), http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/research/ratification-qatar.html.

14. Country Reports ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

15. Ibid.

16. "Report containing additional information about the initial report submitted by the State of Qatar to the Committee on the Rights of the Child" (Doha: Supreme Council for Family Affairs, July 2001).

17. Country Profiles "Qatar" (Beirut: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [ESCWA], 2002), http://www.escwa.org.lb/ecw/index.asp.

18. "Qatar: International Religious Freedom Report 2003" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 18 December 2003), http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2003/24460pf.htm.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Country Profiles "Qatar" (Beirut: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [ESCWA], 2002), http://www.escwa.org.lb/ecw/index.asp.

22. Country Reports ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

23. Ibid.

24. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

25. "International Parental Child Abduction – Qatar" (U.S. Dept. of State, 29 June 2004), http://travel.state.gov/family/abduction_qatar.html.

26. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

27. "Trafficking in Persons Report" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of State, 11 June 2003).

28. Country Reports ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

29. Ibid.

30. "Trafficking in Persons Report" (U.S. Dept. of State, 11 June 2003).

31. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

32. Country Report ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

33. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

34. Ibid.

35. Table 24, "Gender-related development index," in Human Development Report 2004: Cultural Liberty in Today's Diverse World (New York: United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2004), 217-220. http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/.

36. "University of Qatar Students" (University of Qatar web page), http://www.qu.edu.qa/home/aboutqu/students.htm.

37. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

38. Ibid.

39. Country Report ... (U.S. Dept. of State, 25 February 2004).

40. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

41. The entire law is published in The Peninsula, 20 May 2004.

42. Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 248.

43. "Emir Issues New Labour Law," The Peninsula, 20 May 2004.

44. See, for example, the not atypical interview with Qatar's powerful foreign minister, Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani, who says, "First of all, there is no Qatari opposition. What is called a Qatari opposition is a lie," in "Qatari foreign minister discusses relationship with Al-Jazeera," Africa Intelligence Wire, 2 October 2003.

45. Mohammed El-Nawawy and Adel Iskandar, Al-Jazeera (Cambridge: Westview, 2002), 75-79.

46. Ibid., 75.

47. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

48. "Qatari emir proclaims his country's 1st written constitution," AFP, 9 June 2004.

49. Country Profiles "Qatar" (Beirut: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [ESCWA], 2002), http://www.escwa.org.lb/ecw/index.asp.

50. "Reply ... to the Questionnaire to Governments ..." (Supreme Council for Family Affairs, 2004).

51. Ibid.