The Unified Personal Status Law for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) represents one of the projects that aim at a codification of the provisions of Islamic Judicial Rulings, which endorsed by the ministers of justice in the GCC countries. The law consists of 282 articles, which include provisions relating to the family and personal rights: marriage, divorce, eligibility, jurisdiction, will, and inheritance.
A group of Kuwaiti male and female family law attorneys with varying political and religious backgrounds and ideologies have been working collaboratively on a weekly newspaper articles in order to educate the public and raise awareness on women’s rights and family law issues. The first article series described each article of Kuwait's family law, and the second series is dealing with specific cases and the application of the family law in Kuwait.
The articles are available in Arabic at the following website:
The Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa study presents detailed reports and quantitative ratings on the state of women’s rights in the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It is the first installment of a larger project encompassing the entire MENA region.
The Family Law and the Kuwaiti Parliamentary Elections Survey captures a historic moment as Kuwait women first exercised their political and democratic rights for the first time. It examines the findings of a nationwide survey conducted among 1,376 eligible Kuwaiti male and female voters from all 25 electoral districts during the campaigns leading up to the 2006 parliamentary elections. The report also examines a number of variables that reflect the demographic makeup of Kuwaiti society and their effect on voting decisions.
Through its regional Family Law Program, Freedom House published the Women's Rights in the Kuwaiti Personal Status Law and the Bahraini Shari'a Judicial Rulings (Theory Portion) which brings together Sunni, Shiite and legal scholars from the State of Kuwait and the Kingdom of Bahrain to analyze family law, Islamic jurisprudence, and religious and civil interpretations in an attempt to bridge key differences among their perspectives.
This file reviews the articles of the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is a treaty establishing an individual complaint mechanism for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
For more information, please visit the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/procedure.htm.
This file includes the text of “Declaration and Platform for Action," which was addressed at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing, China. The Declaration aspired at achieving greater equality and opportunity for women.
For more information, please visit the United Nations (UN) at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/plat1.htm.