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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 5
(17 of 22 pages)
So as women parliamentarians, we had to sit down and think, how are we going to
help our fellow women since we are out numbered, so we agreed from the caucus and through this caucus, we came
together as the women of Malawi, despite the different political affiliations which we had. We had to stick with
one voice. So we managed through this caucus to pass a law, this is the Wills and Inheritance Act, because you
know, in Malawi a woman -- for example, if their husband dies, which means all their property would have been grabbed
from her, so we had to fight to change this law. And luckily enough, because it was a women who was Minister over
women, children and community development.
So in Malawi, before a bill is taken to Parliament, it has to go through the cabinet and being the only woman in
the cabinet, you can see how difficult it was for that law to pass and this Minister had to weep, I tell you, to
at least for men to sympathize that this law should go to Parliament. And we tried as much as possible to lobby
our fellow men parliamentarians to support this bill, so lucky enough this bill was passed. And you can see, it's
through this caucus how we managed to bring this law.
In Malawi our country is basically based on agriculture and you will find that it is a woman who works very hard
in the gardens. But when it comes to -- you know, when the produce is going to the market, it will be the man who
will control the cash. The woman will have no say on this.
When we are choosing a chief in the village, it will be the women who will choose the chief, but after that chief
is installed, when there are, you know, issues which comes up, a woman will never be called to make a decision
together with men. So you can see how difficult it is really for decision making in my country.
I just wanted to add on this, since there are a lot of people who want to speak, I end up there. Thank you, Madam
Chair.
Chair: Thank you very much. Now, the gentleman who joined us at the table, please.
Speaker: My is Isham Basarhil (ph). I'm the Chief Editor of the Elym (ph) newspaper, which is one of the
widely spread newspapers. I want to talk of the freedom of press and the freedom of expression in Yemen and in
many emerging democracies where the citizens and the people abroad are told that each country has its own characteristics
in interpreting the significance and the meaning of democracy, in order not give many of the rights of the citizens
or to refrain from granting those citizens their rights. So they try to find some interpretation and in the forefront
of these rights comes the freedom of expression.
The political dictionary gives democracy only one meaning. In Yemen and as it has been said by the president of
the Republic, we have no other choice, we've chosen democracy and we won't go back. And as Dr. Irani yesterday
said, democracy comes with unification and with unity in 1990 and that's why it is the partner of unification and
unless there is democracy, there will be no unity and no unification.
We cannot deny the fact that there is democracy in Yemen and there is a freedom of expression and freedom of press,
but we've found recently that the government represented by the press, which are not to be found in other democracies,
have shouldered the responsibility of confronting the press, trying to restrain the press and also to confiscate
the freedom of speech and of expression and in order to do so, we've found that six newspaper are taken to court
with different accusations put forward by the Ministry of Information in the country, in the Ministry, the Yemeni
Information Ministry, which issued recently an interpretation of the press law, in which it confiscated the freedom
of press and this list of laws has become more powerful than the law itself and these six newspapers I told you
are Elym and Yemen Times and these are only two examples of these newspapers.
In conclusion, I want to say that the freedom of expression and the press freedom in Yemen is facing danger and
in order to confiscate this freedom. Thank you.
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