The first part of this essay looked at the domestic side of policymaking on women&rsquo;s issue, examining how the regime engaged (or did not engage) with the feminist movement on the new draft personal status law. The essay concluded that instead of partnering with the feminist movement to write the legislation as it had historically done, the regime crafted the bill with loyalist bodies, namely the National Council for Women (NCW).&nbsp;
&nbsp;Several feminist organizations and initiatives have played an important role in representing women, as the primary subject of the law. The fact that these organizations work to push women&rsquo;s actual needs out of its peripheral space into the public arena has given them some voice in policy making. In Egypt, where participatory democracy is absent, the regime holds exclusive policy making power, which conditions the involvement of organizations that represent women to the regime&rsquo;s desire to share its authority with other parties. The work on the current personal status draft law has exemplified the current regime&rsquo;s ability to monopolize the process of writing legislation and sideline other parties representing women. In part two of this essay, we look at another factor that influences the domestic balance of power in policy- and law-making: the international climate.
&nbsp;A broad swathe of people opposed to increasing women&rsquo;s rights view them as a Western innovation alien to our culture, which has shaped the collective impression of international conventions on women&rsquo;s rights in Egyptian society. This explains the resurgence of criticism and attacks on the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that countered the wave of objections to the current personal status bill. Some blame the CEDAW for empowering the feminist movement and increasing its political leverage in our Eastern society. I agree with this argument, but approach the issue from a different perspective. The international community has an important role to play in crafting international agreements that create a general framework for states&rsquo; commitment to the rights of their citizens. Feminist groups with varied political outlooks and organizational structures work within this framework to enhance their political weight and ability to lobby for their demands (El-Ghobashy, 2008). In turn, in order to unilaterally draft legislation, the current regime has had to curb the impact of the international community on the feminist movement in Egypt. This part of the essay looks at the development of the personal status law to illustrate this thesis.
<h3>&nbsp;Egypt&rsquo;s Partnership with the International Community in the Field of Women&rsquo;s Rights: The Example of CEDAW</h3>
The partnership between Egypt and the international community in the area of women&rsquo;s rights cannot be understand in isolation from its regime of reservations that establish the nature of this partnership. Egypt has always sought to tie its international obligations to a set of reservations<a href="#ref_1">[i]</a> that assert the supremacy of national laws (Moussa, 2011, p. 85). That system of reservations allowed Egypt to join numerous international covenants without committing itself to provisions it believed contravened its social values, in particular Islamic law (Shari&rsquo;a), which is the main source of legislation. In this way, Egypt balanced its desire to join international conventions while maintaining the appropriate domestic balance of power.
&nbsp;Egypt cited Shari&rsquo;a as the grounds for its reservations to multiple provisions in international conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and CEDAW, which is the focus of this essay. Egypt made its ratification of CEDAW conditional on its reservations to several articles, most important Article 2, which obligates signatory states to end all forms of discrimination against women, and Article 16 concerning equality between men and women in the institution of marriage.<a href="#ref_2">[ii]</a> Egypt was one of eleven states which believed that eliminating discrimination against women and guaranteeing gender equality in marriage contravened Islamic law (Moussa, 2011, p. 100).&nbsp;
&nbsp;Theoretically, the system of reservations gives states room to place their international obligations in a realistic context, allowing them to act on their commitments in a more effective way. In my view, this is a reasonable accommodation insofar as states are not compelled to abandon local values and existing national laws to join international conventions. But numerous states exploit the reservation system, effectively turning their accession to international agreements into a merely formal action that does nothing to actually change the conditions of their citizens. This is the case with CEDAW, which has the biggest reservation regime than any other international convention. Many of these reservations undermine the fundamental purpose of the convention, which is to eliminate discrimination against women, thereby eroding the convention&rsquo;s significance and effectiveness to protect women&rsquo;s rights (Schabas, 1997, p. 85).&nbsp;
&nbsp;When it comes to women&rsquo;s rights, CEDAW is the linchpin in the partnership between Egypt and the international community. Thanks to Egypt&rsquo;s reservations on the convention, the partnership is based on a recognition of the international community that Islamic law is a source of legislation in Egypt, particularly legislation concerning women.&nbsp;
<h3>&nbsp;A Context to understand previous amendments to the personal status law</h3>
One of the most significant amendments to the personal status law presented in Law 44/1979, making it easier for women to pursue a divorce through litigation and guaranteeing women several rights, including the right to housing and child custody. Known as &ldquo;Jihan&rsquo;s law,&rdquo; it was issued by presidential decree by the late Anwar al-Sadat in the middle of a decade (1976 to 1985) focused on global women&rsquo;s rights, during which the UN encouraging states to prioritize women&rsquo;s rights on their domestic agendas (Elsadda, 2020, p. 58). The global context therefore influenced the revision of the personal status law. Sadat&rsquo;s consistent desire to partner with the international community presented a suitable motivation to engage with these amendments, which he justified to portray Egypt as a modern state seeking to end the persecution of women. Both pressures from local feminist forces and the international context helped materialize these amendments of the personal status law that were previously viewed as problematic.&nbsp;
&nbsp;CEDAW was established in 1979, but Egypt didn&rsquo;t joined the convention until 1984, at which time it became binding under the Egyptian constitution. Within a year of accession, the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled the Law 44/1979 unconstitutional because it contravened procedural legislative rules. The ruling put the revised personal status law in jeopardy. The year 1985 was an important one for the international agenda, with the second UN conference on women&rsquo;s rights scheduled to be held in Nairobi, and local feminist forces used this to pressure the regime to not reverse the gains they had made (Elsadda, 2020, p. 59). In this case, the feminist movement exploited the international context to push for women&rsquo;s rights, lobbying the state to pass Law 100/1985, which was essentially a revised version of the law overturned by the Supreme Constitutional Court. The parliament issued the law before the UN conference was convened.&nbsp;
&nbsp;Another revision to the personal status law&mdash;the khul&rsquo; law&mdash;grew out of a new wave of international support. In the run-up to the international human rights conference in Vienna in 1993, the CEDAW reservation committee urged member states to review their reservations to the convention as part of its efforts to push for the implementation of all human rights conventions (Moussa, 2011, p. 100). The review committee continued its effort for five years, until 1998, when it explicitly declared that states must commit to the fundamental goal and purpose of the convention, which is &ldquo;ending discrimination against women and achieving equality between men and women&rdquo; (Moussa, 2011, p. 1010). This declaration put several states, including Egypt, in a peculiar position. At the time Egypt was working to amend the personal status law to provide for khul&rsquo;, and the law was adopted in 2000 over widespread objections that it contravened the traditional legislative principles by relying on a minority opinion of Islamic legal scholars.&nbsp;
These legislative changes cannot be evaluated without considering the dynamic between the international context and feminist movements inside Egypt.&nbsp;
<h3>&nbsp;What about the new personal status bill?</h3>
The discussion above shows how the international context creates opportunities for local feminist groups to impose their agenda, or parts of it. An international climate that supports women&rsquo;s issues and pushes states to fulfill their international obligations always has an impact on the position of the Egyptian feminist movement and its place in the domestic balance of power, allowing it to influence legislation (Friedman, 1999, p. 358). By the same token, the aforementioned examples spotlight the lack of a similar opportunity in the current moment, explaining the feminist movement&rsquo;s feeble influence and the regime&rsquo;s ability to act unilaterally on women-related legislation.
&nbsp;In past years, the supportive international climate has been eroded by various crises around the world, most importantly the rise of right-wing regimes in the US and Europe. The right-wing discourse attacks the very idea of an international project and dismisses the concept of universal human rights. These developments have echoed in Egypt, where the regime wholly rejects any discourse critical of its performance, limiting cooperation with UN bodies within very narrow bounds. In women&rsquo;s rights, the regime has adopted a strategy of selectivity, responding to issues on the UN agenda it deems worthy, such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage, while refusing to engage at all on more sensitive issues such as opening the public space for feminist movements&rsquo; expression and allowing civil society organizations, including feminist groups, to operate freely. It so seems that Egypt dictates the terms of its partnership with the international community, and closely determines the work of international organizations operating locally. As a result, the work of these organizations has acted to tighten the regime&rsquo;s grip on numerous aspects of Egyptians&rsquo; lives, among them women&rsquo;s rights.
&nbsp;UN Women, like many other UN agencies, cooperates with the Egyptian government and the NCW in implementing Egypt&rsquo;s international obligations domestically. The agency played a role in influencing state policies criminalizing FGM and child marriage. It also worked to stiffen the penalty for sexual harassment in the Penal Code, networking with multiple feminist initiatives focused on this issue. But its role has simultaneously narrowed, particularly when it comes to the personal status law. There is a policies unit in UN Women that works towards producing a personal status law as fair as possible to women, but recently its role has been limited to the provision of technical support, in the form of comparative or field studies conducted at the behest of the Egyptian government. Although such effort could have produced a law that was fairer to women, this is not reflected in the current draft.&nbsp;
&nbsp;Laws are ultimately a reflection of the existing power balance and the interaction between political and social forces at a particular moment in history. In the past, the international community has worked with this framework to exert influence, giving feminist forces in Egypt greater political weight. The regime has always tried to contain the influence of the international community on the domestic balance of power, either by exploiting the system of reservations or taking the rise of right-wing regimes as the opportunity to impose new rules of partnership with the international community. As the UN role declines, the local feminist movement finds itself without the support that in the past created opportunities to advance its demands. The status of the feminist movement has therefore eroded and it has less weight as a political agent; this is exemplified by the drafting of the personal status draft law. In the current moment, the regime has managed to impose its conditions on its partnership with UN agencies, ensuring that they continue to support and fund projects and policies on the state agenda for women and thereby boosting its political clout and its image as a regime concerned about women&rsquo;s issues (Alvarez, 2000, p. 32). There is thus no room to influence the personal status bill currently before parliament except in a way that serves the regime&rsquo;s positive image of itself as a champion of women.&nbsp;
<hr>
<a href="#end_ref1">[i]</a> The system of reservations is a historical product of the post-colonial era when the international community lent great importance to bringing as many states as possible into international conventions. It did so by allowing states to express reservations to various articles in these conventions. Previously, states could only express reservations with the agreement of all signatory states. As the international community sought to ensure the inclusion of post-colonial states in Central and South America in the international order, it became clear that the values of these societies had to be respected (Moussa, 2011, p. 89).
<a href="#end_ref2">[ii]</a> &nbsp;Egypt expressed reservations to Articles 2, 9/2, 16, and 29.
<hr>
References
<ul>
<li>Alvarez, S. (2000). Translating the global effects of transnational organizing on local feminist discourses and practices in Latin America. Meridians, 1(1), 29&ndash;67.</li>
<li>&nbsp;El-Ghobashy, M. (2008). Constitutional contention in contemporary Egypt. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(11), 1590&ndash;1610.</li>
<li>&nbsp;Elsadda, H. (2019). Against all odds: A legacy of appropriation, contestation, and negotiation of Arab feminisms in postcolonial states. Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 4(16), 53&ndash;64.&nbsp;</li>
<li>Friedman, E.J. (1999). The effects of &ldquo;transnationalism reversed&rdquo; in Venezuela: Assessing the impact of UN global conferences on the women&rsquo;s movement.&nbsp;International Feminist Journal of Politics, 1(3), 357&ndash;381.</li>
<li>&nbsp;Moussa, J. (2011). Competing fundamentalisms and Egypt women&rsquo;s family rights: International law and the reform of shari&rsquo;a-derived legislation. Brill.</li>
<li>Schabas, W. (1997). Reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.&nbsp;William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 3(1), 79&ndash;112.</li>
</ul>

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