"I'm a law student from Germany and i'm working on my thesis in which i compare the Arab League with the European Union. My focus lies on the Arab Charter regarding Human Rights. I'm searching for some useful inforamtion in english about the Arab Human Rights Charter and also the importans of an Arab Court of Human rights. I would appreciate your help."

  
The email above arrived this morning. Here is my answer.

The Arab Charter on Human Rights, along with similar documents such as the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, serves two main purposes.

• Arab governments have a generally poor human rights record and the charter is largely a public relations exercise to head off criticism and give the impression they are doing something about it. 

• The other purpose is to undermine the universality principle of human rights by claiming exemptions on cultural or religious grounds.

This can also be seen in the way Arab states have signed up to various international conventions on human rights while at the same time registering "reservations" which in effect negate the aims of the conventions.

In English, the standard work on the subject is Ann Elizabeth Mayer's book, Islam and Human Rights. Mayer explains:

"One of the most striking and consistent features in all the Islamic human rights schemes is the use of Islamic criteria to restrict human rights. Provisions in the Islamic human rights schemes reflect the thesis that the rights afforded in international law are too generous and that these only become acceptable when Islamic restrictions are placed on human rights to cut them down to size."

These "Islamic" limitations are not clearly defined though they often refer vaguely to the principles of sharia law – which itself is not formally codified and can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In practice, this amounts to cherry-picking with regard to which rights are accepted or rejected.

The Arab Charter on Human Rights is not exclusively Islamic (it mentions "other divine laws" besides Islamic sharia) but it broadly follows the principles described by Mayer.

The first version of the charter was adopted by the council of the Arab League in 1994. None of the member states ratified it, so it fell by the wayside. That was no real loss, since it was full of get-out clauses anyway.

A revised version was issued in 2004 and an article by Mervat Rishmawi describes the background to it. On paper, it's a good deal stronger than the previous version. It does, for example, acknowledge the universality principle and talks (in slightly ambiguous language) about equality between men and women.

But there is also a lot that it leaves out. Rishmawi comments:

"The Charter does not prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments, nor does it extend rights to non-citizens in many areas. It also allows for the imposition of restrictions on the exercise of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion far beyond international human rights law, which allows for restrictions only on the manifestations of a religion or belief, but not on the freedom to hold a religion or belief. 

"Moreover, the Charter leaves many important rights to national legislation. For example, it allows for the imposition of the death penalty against children if national law allows it. It also leaves the regulation of rights and responsibilities of men and women in marriage and divorce to national law. Thus the Charter mirrors to a large degree the areas of acceptance and reservations regarding international human rights treaties by member states of the Arab League."

Almost half of the league's members have still not ratified the charter and it's easy to find examples of Arab governments flouting its provisions.

The revision of the Arab Charter on Human Rights in 2004 took place in a specific political context. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, together with President Bush’s speech announcing his "forward strategy of freedom" later that year, prompted much Arab debate about democracy and reform.

Largely as a result of that (along with some other things like the highly critical Arab Human Development Reports published by the UN) the year 2004 brought numerous reform initiatives, among them the Alexandria Declaration, the Sana’a Declaration, the Doha Declaration, the Arab Business Council Initiative – even one from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Although these were mostly non-governmental in their origins, the Alexandria, Sana'a and Doha conferences had government backing. President Hosni Mubarak opened the Alexandria conference with a speech on "Arab Reform: Vision and Implementation" which was probably intended to take some of the heat off his regime.

Shortly after that, the Arab League's summit meeting in Tunis vowed ...

"... to pursue reform and modernisation in our countries, and to keep pace with the rapid world changes, by consolidating the democratic practice, by enlarging participation in political and public life, by fostering the role of all components of the civil society, including NGOs, in conceiving of the guidelines of the society of tomorrow, by widening women’s participation in the political, economic, social, cultural and educational fields and reinforcing their rights and status in society, and by pursuing the promotion of the family and the protection of Arab youth." 

As far as Arab governments were concerned, though, this was mainly window-dressing.

One notable feature of the "alternative" Arab and Islamic human rights charters is the emphasis they usually place on "the family". "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society; it is based on marriage between a man and a woman," the Arab charter says – and it goes on to talk about "protection of the family" and "the strengthening of family ties".

In the language of human rights discourse, this is a coded way of restricting sexual rights and freedoms. It's also an area where conservative Muslims seek common ground with religious conservatives in the west.

Defending "the family" was the main excuse used by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood this week when it issued a statement denouncing the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

As for the Arab Court of Human Rights, this currently doesn't exist. It's a proposal put forward by King Hamad of Bahrain (who was recently voted "Humanitarian of the Year" in a poll for an obscure Kuwaiti newspaper) and presumably it's meant to deflect criticism of human rights abuses in his kingdom.
 

Posted by Brian Whitaker
Friday, 15 March 2013