Doha: (Millennium Hotel-12/5/2008): The forum on Human Rights in the contemporary political and judiciary message in Arab States organized by the National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) with the participation of a number of Human Rights experts, specialists and activists today ended its two day deliberations at the Millennium Hotel with Dr. Ali Smaikh al-Marry at the chair of the fourth session devoted to Citizenship issues in Gulf countries and Woman Rights in the discourse of Women institutes.
The session was addressed by expert on women security, Dr. Ghadah Ali Moussa, Dr. Norhan al-Shaikh, political science professor, Cairo University and Dr. Nahid Izzuldin, Human Rights expert.
Dr. Ghadah reviewed the performance of both the National Women Council and Egyptian Centre for Human Rights taking into consideration that the first body represents the official national body entrusted with considering women issues while the Council is considered a national non-governmental organization representing a ring in a chain comprising a number of non-governmental organizations entrusted with defending women rights.
In this regard, Dr. Ghadah dealt with the judicial intellectual concepts that govern the activities of the two bodies and the scope of their work. On the issue of empowerment, the lecturer noted that the Egyptian council is closer to what she called the empowerment concept than the Egyptian Centre.
The lecturer then dealt with the way the two bodies implemented international conventions on women issues.
Dr. Norhan meanwhile dealt with the vision of Arab Nationalist and leftists Human Rights groups and drew attention to the fact that these groups mainly focus on basic economic and social rights which appear to have priority with them over issues of such as a chain of basic political freedom issues.
This, she went on to say, prompts a core question: do rights of voting, free expression, public protest and association out-weigh rights to decent living, education and work? And, How can a human being freely exercise political rights in the absence decent living, good education?
Having quickly reviewed the difficulties the educated cultured elite find in trying to answer such questions, she concluded that liberal states enjoying basic and political freedoms recognized that governments will have to ensure minimum decent living conditions for citizens to enable them exercise other less pressing rights.
For her part, Dr. Nahid Izzuldin who presented a working paper stressed that intellectual success is measured by the degree of its ability to achieve social development as well as by its ability to achieve the sort of developments that would enable it to tackle various challenges and react properly to them in a manner that reflects creativity and eliminates rigidity.
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