Women's Rights in Bahrain - Personal Status Law

Personal Status Law

The most pressing issue for many Bahraini women is the lack of a unified family law or Personal Status Law as it is known, leaving matters of divorce and child custody to the discretion of Sharia judges, who have been criticised for a lack of consistency in their judgements. In November 2005, the Supreme Council for Women in an alliance with other women's rights activists, began a campaign for change - organising demonstrations, putting up posters across the island and carrying out a series of media interviews (see Supreme Council's website for full details in Arabic).

However, reform of the law has been resisted by the leading Shia Islamist party, Al Wefaq, resulting in a major political showdown with women's rights activists. Al Wefaq has stated that neither Chamber of Deputies of Bahrain elected MPs nor the government have authority to change the law because these institutions could 'misinterpret the word of God'. Instead, the right to reform the law is the sole responsibility of religious leaders.

In 9 November 2005, supporters of Al Wefaq claimed to have organised Bahrain's largest ever demonstration with 120,000 protesting against the introduction of the Personal Status Law, and for the maintenance of each religious group having their own divorce and inheritance laws. On the same day an alliance of women's rights organisations held a rally calling for the unified law, but this attracted only 500 supporters.

The issue of the introduction of a unified Personal Status Law has divided civil society into two camps, with women's rights and human rights groups wanting its introduction, opposed by Shia Islamist groups in alliance with the wahabbi Asalah:

For:

• Supreme Council for Women
• Bahrain Human Rights Society
• Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society
• Bahrain Women's Union
• Women's Petition
• National Democratic Action
• Al Sharaka (Bahrain branch of Amnesty International)
• Bahrain Centre for Human Rights

Against:

• Al Wefaq
• Asalah
• Islamic Action Party
• Islamic Awareness Society
• Capital Transparency Society