Al-Jaafari at UNSC Session: Syria is an Example to Be Followed in Women Empowerment

NEW YORK-Syria is a leading country in the Arab and Islamic worlds in terms of empowering women and meeting their needs, stressed Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations.

Al-Jaafari, who was speaking last night at the UN Security Council’s Session on “Women, the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice”, said that while women in Syria assumed the position of Vice-President, they were not even allowed to drive in other countries. 

“The crisis in Syria had been caused by mercenaries recruited from all parts of the world to impose strange, inhuman and Wahhabi ideas that completely contradict the values and international conventions in which the Syrian people believe. 

 “These unjust Wahhabi ideas had degraded women, turned them into concubines and encouraged them to commit adultery in the name of Islam with a full support from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and France,” al-Jaafari said. He pointed out that one of the dangerous fatwas which targeted women in Syria was “jihad al-Nikah” (jihad by marriage) which was issued by a number of idiots who were supported, financed by some gulf countries, mainly Qatar and the Saudi Arabia.

“This fatwa insults Arabs and Islam as it urges Muslim women to practice prostitution in the name of religion,” al-Jaafari said.

He affirmed that Qatar and Saudi Arabia will keep offering money and feed sectarianism in order to eliminate the socio-economic, security and legislative progress in Syria aiming at undermining the country’s independent national political decision.

Al-Jaafari expressed Syria’s deep concern over the deterioration of security in the camps set in the neighboring countries to host displaced Syrians, indicating that Syrian women and girls are suffering highest levels of insecurity and are being exposed to violations like rape and illegal marriage in these camps.

Al-Jaafari asserted that “the regimes Qatar and Saudi Arabia must also be held accountable for assisting those who committed rape, trafficking, and forced marriage against Syrian women. 

“Syrian girl refugees, some younger than 14, were being sold as slaves in the name of religion,” he said

The Syrian Representative at the UN stressed that Syria has sent a detailed report on the ill fatwas to the UN Secretary General, pointing out that starting from their keenness to punish criminals the Syrian authorities are documenting these crimes and dangerous violations, arresting perpetrators and held them accountable before the Syrian national law.

 He called on the United Nations to put pressure on all powers who sought to destabilize the Syrian people for profit.  The plight of Syrian women living under the Israeli occupation in the Syrian Golan Heights must also be addressed, he stressed.

H. Mustafa