This report attempts to provide the context for understanding the dynamics that promote and impede women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It synthesises the existing information on discrimination and violence against women in the MENA region, highlights the national, regional, and international networks and women’s initiatives that promote women’s rights in the MENA and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), and finally it analyses the extent of gender mainstreaming into the EMP and recommends how women’s rights could be better addressed by the EU and Partner States.
This report takes the stance that the promotion of women’s rights is indivisible from human rights, democracy and development. For, how can women’s rights advance, if the human rights dialogue does not apply equally to men and women? In the same vein, how can women’s rights be promoted if fifty percent of the population is systematically marginalised from equal participation in society’s decision-making processes? And how can there be real development if half the population does not share in the improvement of quality of life?