The necessity of considering women’s rights an integral part of human rights and setting them on the agenda of the new Council for Human Rights

(Cairo, April 13th, 2011) The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights and the Egyptian Coalition for Civil Education and Women’s Participation received the news of the reformation of the National Council for Human Rights with great satisfaction: The appointments were fair, included the most distinguished people of the society in all fields and members with broad experience in the field of human rights.
The Council is considered to be one of the important national institutions that assure Egypt’s commitment to the international agreements and that also assures that women’s rights are an integral part of human rights.
ECWR wishes that the National Council for Women is quickly reestablished in order to continue rebuilding all national institutions, especially those that enhance and activate women’s role in the society and enhance their positions.
We call on the National Council for Human Rights to set women’s rights in all civil, political, economic and social levels as its priorities in order to guarantee equal participation, especially in matters related to decision making and equal job offers. We also call on the Council to maintain the achievements concerning laws of social reform (such as the personal status code and the child law) that were amended to guarantee a minimum rate of human, women’s, and children’s rights. Still, the amendments
were not enough to guarantee the rights of women and children as full citizens.
We also call on the Council to hold a societal discussion in order to achieve the principles of human rights that the Egyptian people and especially the youth had called for. We emphasize that the real victory of the Revolution is achieved by maintaining human rights and not by ignoring them.