Participants Hail Arab Women Summit, Hope for Results

Participants hailed the first Arab Women Summit, which wound up in Cairo on November 20, as a landmark in the history of the Arab feminist movement. But some delegations hoped for concrete results from the gathering.

Soad Bakour, chief of the Syrian Women Union, said the Cairo Declaration, released at the closing session, expressed the opinions reviewed during the summit on the future challenges of Arab women, especially the political-related issues, Egypt's Middle East News Agency reported.

The final document demanded Israel to withdraw from all occupied Arab and Palestinian territories and called for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

It stressed the need to activate the role of Arab women, urging Arab countries to adopt all possible policies and measures to eliminate poverty, maintain equal chances for men and women, empower women to assume decision-making positions on all levels.

Naziha Zarrouq, Tunisian minister of women and family affairs, said the summit was significant as a beginning, but "we hoped that the declaration would have taken a more effective position through forming a committee to lobby the international community for the cause of Palestinian women, children and people."

Zarrouq was quoted as saying that this deficiency was understandable because it was the maiden Arab women summit, expressing the hope that the next summits would provide grounds for more discussions and change of expertise.

Mervat Tellawi, secretary general of Egypt's National Council for Women (NCW), explained why the Tunisian proposal for forming a committee to internationalize the Palestinian issue was not tabled in the final declaration, saying that the idea was good but it was already adopted by the recent Islamic summit held in Doha, Qatar.

The summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has decided to lobby for the Palestinian cause at the United Nations, Tellawi added.

But Manal Alalousi, head of the Iraqi Women's Union, voiced reservations over the summit's final declaration, saying that it expressed the stance of "only those who drafted" it.

The summit just expressed solidarity with the Iraqi women, but took no further stance on supporting the Iraqi people who are under the sufferings of the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The first Arab women summit, entitled "Challenges of the Present and Horizons of the Future," opened on Saturday and was attended by a total of 400 Arab female dignitaries, including nine first ladies.

The participants discussed primarily the condition of Arab women, showed support for the Palestinian women and pushed for a unified action towards activating Arab women's role in realizing the revival of the Arab world.



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