Women of Marrakesh
Women of Marrakesh
Updated 02:18am (Mla time) Dec 04, 2004
By Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the December 4, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
MARRAKESH -- The winner of the Gender Equity Award, which is being given for the first time this year as part of the Global Media Awards, is the Ennakhil Association for Woman and Child, a nongovernmental organization founded in 1997.
"Ennakhil" is the Arabic word for "palm tree," which is also the emblem of Marrakesh. In its brochure, the association uses the palm tree to illustrate the interlocking relationships among its various fields of activity and advocacy, which include education and training, social development, health, justice and politics.
Meeting with the delegation from Population International, as well as the other Global Media Awards winners, Dr. Zakia Mirili, the association's president, outlined Ennakhil's scope of work, which is broad indeed. Its most basic mission, she said, is to reach out to the 65 percent of women in Morocco who are poor and illiterate and are thus in no position to know and defend their rights. "In the last five years, we have worked with about 10,000 women," Dr. Mirili said, providing basic literacy classes and holding consciousness-raising sessions, as well as establishing income-generating projects, such as a women's handicraft cooperative.
Ennakhil also provides counseling and care to survivors of domestic violence, and refers them to lawyers that will handle their cases pro bono. In the field of reproductive health, they conduct training and orientation on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.
Hand in hand with providing necessary and urgent services, Ennakhil also engages in legal and legislative advocacy, counting among its most prominent victories the passage last year of the new Family Code that addresses many of the more blatant manifestations of gender inequity in Moroccan society. It's said that the new Family Code was passed, despite the stringent opposition mounted by, as Dr. Mirili enumerates, "the Islamists, traditional-minded politicians, police, judges and parliamentarians," mainly because King Mohammed VI strongly supported its passage.
* * *
AMONG THE "REVOLUTIONARY" changes ushered in by the new Family Code, said Dr. Mirili, are: raising the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18; making polygamy "very difficult" for men after many conditions were imposed before a man could legitimately found a second, third or fourth family; allowing a woman to report abuse by her husband with no need for male witnesses; making it possible for a woman who divorces her husband to keep custody of her children; and giving single women with children legal recognition as mothers even without having been married.
But, says Dr. Mirili, "so many other laws still need to be changed." Which is why another major plank in Ennakhil's crowded menu of programs is expanding the role of women in politics, supporting legal measures meant to encourage more women to run for office and training young women in politics and gender orientation.
Listening to Dr. Mirili's presentation, I had a funny feeling that I'd heard it all before. Of course, the issues they hope to address are quite familiar to Filipinos, or at least to those interested in gender issues. But in our country, the issues that Ennakhil hopes to address are assumed by quite a number of women's organizations. Ennakhil, said Population International president Werner Fornos, is the first of its kind in the Arab world, and is taking on the whole plethora of gender inequities all by its lonesome.
* * *
STILL, the women of Ennakhil might not be fighting a lonely battle for long. Next on our agenda was a visit to the Lycee Aouda Saan, a government-run all-girls' high school, the only such school in the Medina or old city of Marrakesh.
We visited the school to look into the activities of their Health Club (Club de Sante), which runs a peer-to-peer reproductive health counseling program, known as Jeunes por jeunes, or Youth for Youth, with funding from the United Nations Population Fund.
Standing proudly beside posters they had obviously slaved over were teenage girls, some in long robes and veils, others in denims and white coats, explaining their many activities, from educational theater to group discussions, workshops on various aspects of health (including rather grisly illustrations of the wages of smoking and drugs), and discussions on matters like sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS (called "SIDA" in the European fashion).
Aside from hosting discussions on health concerns, the members of the Health Club, with their faculty advisers, also help manage a counseling center, which includes a "listening room" where, as one teacher assured us, "any girl with a problem can come in and talk to us about it, without fear."
* * *
ONE of the things that struck us visitors about the school was how it illustrated the way a multicultural Islamic society works. English teacher Mr. Elcadi quite proudly told us, "You can drop by any classroom and you will see girls in veils and girls without veils sitting side by side and working together, taking no notice of their differences."
The school has no policy on veiling, said the teacher, and no uniform is imposed. "It is their choice," he added.
Interestingly enough, the all-girls' high school (there are also "mixed" high schools, we were told) is named after one of Morocco's early women leaders, a suffragist who campaigned for women's rights. "She is buried within the school grounds," Mr. Elcadi volunteered.
As we exited the school, passing a phalanx of young women who had been let out of classes precisely to meet the visitors from abroad, I couldn't help thinking what Aouda Saan thought about them, if she wasn't thinking that finally her life's work was bearing fruit.
Updated 02:18am (Mla time) Dec 04, 2004
By Rina Jimenez-David
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the December 4, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
MARRAKESH -- The winner of the Gender Equity Award, which is being given for the first time this year as part of the Global Media Awards, is the Ennakhil Association for Woman and Child, a nongovernmental organization founded in 1997.
"Ennakhil" is the Arabic word for "palm tree," which is also the emblem of Marrakesh. In its brochure, the association uses the palm tree to illustrate the interlocking relationships among its various fields of activity and advocacy, which include education and training, social development, health, justice and politics.
Meeting with the delegation from Population International, as well as the other Global Media Awards winners, Dr. Zakia Mirili, the association's president, outlined Ennakhil's scope of work, which is broad indeed. Its most basic mission, she said, is to reach out to the 65 percent of women in Morocco who are poor and illiterate and are thus in no position to know and defend their rights. "In the last five years, we have worked with about 10,000 women," Dr. Mirili said, providing basic literacy classes and holding consciousness-raising sessions, as well as establishing income-generating projects, such as a women's handicraft cooperative.
Ennakhil also provides counseling and care to survivors of domestic violence, and refers them to lawyers that will handle their cases pro bono. In the field of reproductive health, they conduct training and orientation on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.
Hand in hand with providing necessary and urgent services, Ennakhil also engages in legal and legislative advocacy, counting among its most prominent victories the passage last year of the new Family Code that addresses many of the more blatant manifestations of gender inequity in Moroccan society. It's said that the new Family Code was passed, despite the stringent opposition mounted by, as Dr. Mirili enumerates, "the Islamists, traditional-minded politicians, police, judges and parliamentarians," mainly because King Mohammed VI strongly supported its passage.
* * *
AMONG THE "REVOLUTIONARY" changes ushered in by the new Family Code, said Dr. Mirili, are: raising the minimum age of marriage from 15 to 18; making polygamy "very difficult" for men after many conditions were imposed before a man could legitimately found a second, third or fourth family; allowing a woman to report abuse by her husband with no need for male witnesses; making it possible for a woman who divorces her husband to keep custody of her children; and giving single women with children legal recognition as mothers even without having been married.
But, says Dr. Mirili, "so many other laws still need to be changed." Which is why another major plank in Ennakhil's crowded menu of programs is expanding the role of women in politics, supporting legal measures meant to encourage more women to run for office and training young women in politics and gender orientation.
Listening to Dr. Mirili's presentation, I had a funny feeling that I'd heard it all before. Of course, the issues they hope to address are quite familiar to Filipinos, or at least to those interested in gender issues. But in our country, the issues that Ennakhil hopes to address are assumed by quite a number of women's organizations. Ennakhil, said Population International president Werner Fornos, is the first of its kind in the Arab world, and is taking on the whole plethora of gender inequities all by its lonesome.
* * *
STILL, the women of Ennakhil might not be fighting a lonely battle for long. Next on our agenda was a visit to the Lycee Aouda Saan, a government-run all-girls' high school, the only such school in the Medina or old city of Marrakesh.
We visited the school to look into the activities of their Health Club (Club de Sante), which runs a peer-to-peer reproductive health counseling program, known as Jeunes por jeunes, or Youth for Youth, with funding from the United Nations Population Fund.
Standing proudly beside posters they had obviously slaved over were teenage girls, some in long robes and veils, others in denims and white coats, explaining their many activities, from educational theater to group discussions, workshops on various aspects of health (including rather grisly illustrations of the wages of smoking and drugs), and discussions on matters like sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS (called "SIDA" in the European fashion).
Aside from hosting discussions on health concerns, the members of the Health Club, with their faculty advisers, also help manage a counseling center, which includes a "listening room" where, as one teacher assured us, "any girl with a problem can come in and talk to us about it, without fear."
* * *
ONE of the things that struck us visitors about the school was how it illustrated the way a multicultural Islamic society works. English teacher Mr. Elcadi quite proudly told us, "You can drop by any classroom and you will see girls in veils and girls without veils sitting side by side and working together, taking no notice of their differences."
The school has no policy on veiling, said the teacher, and no uniform is imposed. "It is their choice," he added.
Interestingly enough, the all-girls' high school (there are also "mixed" high schools, we were told) is named after one of Morocco's early women leaders, a suffragist who campaigned for women's rights. "She is buried within the school grounds," Mr. Elcadi volunteered.
As we exited the school, passing a phalanx of young women who had been let out of classes precisely to meet the visitors from abroad, I couldn't help thinking what Aouda Saan thought about them, if she wasn't thinking that finally her life's work was bearing fruit.
posted by Dante at 2:18 AM
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