Pages
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 5
(13 of 22 pages)
So this is a very difficult problem and I really want us to talk about the practicalities,
how properly we can empower women, you know, sisters. Thank you.
Chair: Well, you got my vote. I'm moving to your country. Now, the three gentlemen down here, I'm sorry,
in which order did you put your hands up. One, two, three, I think. I'm sorry, and please introduce yourself.
Jamal Adimi: Thank you. Well, I will just want to talk about civil society here. My name is Jamal Adimi.
I am from the Forum for Civil Society and I'm a lawyer, a Yemeni lawyer. I'd like to talk and speak about civil
society and then I just have one quick comment on my friend, who talked about women.
I'll start just from the end. We want to have participation, real participation in Yemen, by [inaudible] society
organization by people. But how can we promote and build up participation in our country? I just want to make some
comment on this.
First, we have a problem in Yemen. Our problem is the law. We don't have the law. We don't have law for civil society
organization to work. But on the other hand, actually we have four laws. We have the law of 1963, which is pre-unification.
Unification was in 1990. We have the law of the North Yemeni from 1963. It's a very totalitarian law, that is in
the drawer of the officials and it's used only when there is an organization that is vocal or doing active job.
If not, it's in the drawer. This law is unconstitutional, because it's before the constitution of 1990, but still
used, so it's a problem. The other law is that we have the civil code. The civil code has one chapter, it talks
about NGOs or civil companies, things like that. It's also used, but it's very vague. We have other laws like the
co-operative law and we have some clauses here and there.
In all this mess of legal structure, people here in Yemen, when they want to -- some initiative and form an NGO,
they have problems. They don't have the freedom to initiate, to start NGOs. Also they don't have the freedom to
close NGOs. We need a law, a law that can protect people's right to start NGOs, a clear and free law. We don't
have it, we have a problem with that.
Also we have in this law that we need in Yemen now, today, before anything else, to start talking about participation
and active role of NGOs is to have less control of paper work. Control of the formal sectors on NGOs work in Yemen
is pre-establishment and after establishment. Pre-establishment by controlling people's right to declare themselves
NGO, to declare themselves a group of people, you need to have a formal and you need to have a decree based on
the governmental body. By controlling that, it affects the work, it affects whose people can go together to do
some kind of work and I will give you some examples.
Like now, we are bringing a case by the syndicate of teachers, again, it's the cabinet and the law of the teacher's
cabinet, in a case, a very administrative case, on salaries and things like that, they give us the cabinet. We
go to court, we bring the case, we have all the papers, we just claim that they did not give them 20 percent increase
that they are allowed to have by the law. What is the plea? What is the response of the government? You are not
legitimate. You don't exist. There are more than 5,000 teachers around the country. They don't exist. They don't
have any saying to vote for some kind of executive counsel to represent a lawyer to bring a sheet of paper to court
to say, we want 20 percent increase. Why? Because some governmental body, the Ministry of Social Affairs, did not
grant them the renewal of their registration of 1994, applying unconstitutional law that is pre-unification of
1963. So the whole structure make it so complicated on people to work. The syndicate of the teacher is there, it's
in existence for years and years and years, but won't start to stick their nose up and start to say, we will go
and protest, we will go to court and we will get our right based on what is written in the code. Then they are
slammed back by saying, you are not legitimate, you are not according to the procedures, which we don't notice.
This is just a very quick example, I just make the point here.
|
[ Introduction ] [ Worldwide Activities ] [ What We Do ] |