Arab Women’s Legal Network’s Accomplishments

One of the prominent achievements of AWLN is founding the first AWLN branch in Morocco on February 7th, 2014 with a group of prominent Moroccan legal activists. This branch works on promoting women’s rights and enhancing the rule of law.

Other activities and achievements by AWLN in past years include the following legal topics and skills enhancements:

  • Development of International Perspectives on Equality and Jurisprudence
  • Developing transparency in courts.
  • Improved Awareness of CEDAW International Agreement and mechanism of legal accountability and reporting methodology in courts.
  • Improved knowledge regarding Domestic Violence and Family Disputes.
  • Deeper understanding of Violence against Women.
  • Enhanced Mediation skills.
  • Law practice management for female lawyers.
  • Institutional Capacity Development
  • Conference on judicial training in Cairo and Beirut.
  • Women’s public legal rights in legal education and trading in Morocco.
  • E-commerce and intellectual property in Bahrain.
  • Alternative dispute resolution.
  • Enhanced understanding of Women’s right to nationality.
  • Developed Legal procedures and application of justice.
  • Developing judicial female leadership.
  • Communication and presentation skills.
  • Legislative drafting skills.
  • Advocacy and lobbying skills.
  • The right to fair trial and the right to observe trials.
  • Enhanced Leadership skills.
  • Implementing workshops in the Moroccan branch, focusing on family rehabilitation, communication skills, legal drafting, implementing a legal clinic and initiating a project on legal aid.
  • Activities related to early marriage and marriage of minors from the psychological, religious and community perspectives in Morocco.
  • Networking and partnering with CSOs, educational and governmental institutes in the Arab World.
  • Strengthening Women’s Political Participation Project: The goal of this project is to promote women’s political participation by creating a dedicated team offering technical expertise and guidance to female candidates and female parliamentarians for the year 2016. The project is divided into three phases:
  1. Phase 1: Empowering female candidates in 2016 elections:   The first phase was the creation of a Consultancy Council to support female candidates in the 2016 elections.  In preparation for Jordan’s 2016 elections, AWLN formed a Consultancy Council consisting of 25 female lawyers from all over Jordan.  The Consultancy Council provided female candidates with guidance and advice in relation to legal policy, in the lead up to the election process.
  2. Phase 2: Upholding Gender integrity of 2016 elections: The second phase was to provide support in monitoring the 2016 elections.  AWLN joined a coalition named “An Eye on Women” which deployed more than 15 lawyers to observe and monitor the elections from a gender perspective. The coalition was led by the Sisterhood Is Global Institute (SIGI) and included more than 36 civil society organizations from all over Jordan. The purpose of this campaign was to collate and analyze the policies of the candidates in relation to gender, and to assess whether those policies included priority issues relating to women’s rights.  Each coalition partner provided a final report to SIGI.  SIGI analyzed the extent to which candidate’s policies target matters pertaining to women’s rights and general attitudes towards women.
  3. Phase 3: AWLN’s support for women in Parliament: The third phase was to form a second Consultancy Council to support women elected to office.  AWLN formed an advanced Consultancy Council that consists of women from all sectors (legal and financial). The role of the Consultancy Council is to train women parliamentarians on how to advocate for law reforms relating to women’s rights. It will also provide additional information and discussion regarding legal and economic issues relating to women.  AWLN hopes to support women’s political participation and advocate for legislative reform, ensuring enhanced rights for women.