Gender & Development editor Caroline Sweetman looks at the issue of citizenship, particularly in the context of the civil resistance movements in the Middle East.

The latest edition of the Gender & Development journal (G&D), is a special issue focusing on citizenship. It includes articles from all regions of the world, providing development and humanitarian workers with an array of case studies and points of view on gender and citizenship.

One of the lovely things about my job as editor of G&D is the opportunity to learn about a hot topic from encounters with feminist activists from different parts of the world. In the past couple of months I have run a workshop in Beirut with women who are deeply involved in political, economic and social rights work in Lebanon and beyond; attended a conference on women's rights and the Arab Spring in Brussels; and worked with authors dotted around the world - from Nepal to the Philippines - as they think through why citizenship is such a key issue for women.

The Citizenship issue of Gender & Development provides a range of persepctives on the topic including the citizenship issues faced by women in three Middle East and North African (MENA) countries; citizenship after conflict in Northern Uganda and Nepal; strengthening women's voices in political processes; young women's citizenship in the Philippines; and citizenship and migration.

To dig a little deeper into the issues, I'll explore a few of the debates at the 2011Women in Development Europe (WIDE) network's annual conference on gender, citizenship and the Arab spring. The conference was co-convened with CRTD-A (Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action), a key international women's rights network serving the Middle East and Mahgreb region. CRTD-A is led by the dynamic and visionary Lina Abou-Habib. 

Two days of plenary sessions and discussions featured activists from the region together with others, notably from the transition countries of Eastern Europe where a similar moment of change after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 threw the region into political, economic and social turmoil.

Alexandra Solik of KARAT, Poland, asked how long the feminist movement would take to learn from history, to see what political transition does to women's rights, and how these are used by opposing sides to justify their actions. The oppression of women provides politically useful heart-rending stories and images which can legitimise international interventions of various kinds - from international development programmes which 'discover' and attempt to counter trafficking, to foreign governments justifying political and military intervention on grounds of women's rights (as occurred most notably in the recent past in 2001 in Afghanistan). Yet all too often this action to support women fades away when it ceases to be politically helpful, and women may find their rights under renewed attack in the aftermath.  Similar stories are well-charted in history - a notable one being the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s in which women had high, but ultimately only partly realised, hopes of the new regime making strides on gender rights issues.

At the WIDE conference, a variety of voices from the MENA region focused on the moment of crisis and opportunity presented to feminists in the region who have played a full role alongside men in overthrowing former regimes. Some of the key women involved in the uprisings shared their experiences. These included Esraa Abdel Fattah who played a highly public role in the Facebook activism  that country. Outside cyberspace and in the physical spaces of downtown Cairo, women demonstrate alongside men - despite the fact that amid political turmoil women face a very different and gender-specific range of risks out on the streets, in part due to their flouting of the norms of women remaining at home, represented in public action by their husbands, fathers and sons.

But while Esraa Abdel Fattah's presentation about her social networking action showed very clearly the continuing hope of many women and men that the Arab spring can still be roundly positive for all citizens, experiences presented by Alexandra Solik and others warn of the naiveté of assuming that all change is good change. Feminists in the region need support from the wider international community as they advance the agendas of women and gender equality with the new governments, holding them to account for any promises they give to uphold women's full and equal human rights.

A range of presenters, including the amazing Mahnaz Afkhami from the Women Learning Partnership (Iran/USA), focused on the concerns they have about the actions and statements of various politicians presenting themselves as 'moderate Islamists', in whose hands women's human rights are safe. History tells us that democracies are necessary, but in themselves insufficient, to guarantee equal and fair rights and resources for all citizens.  Democratic elections - while to be applauded in themselves as the fairest system in terms of electoral process - can nevertheless result in the legitimisation of parties with partisan beliefs, if a majority of voting citizens see fit to elect them.

At the conference feminists from the region decried the continuing Orientalism of the global media and political leaders that see an image of a veiled woman as the single, authentic image of a woman from the MENA region - ignoring the history of decades of action on the part of women - some secular, some of faith, some determinedly going without veils, some veiled - to establish the principles of equal and full human rights for women. The impact of a blind belief in democracy as the fount of all things good results in well-intentioned liberals ignoring the impact of regime change on marginalised groups.

One voice at the conference said, 'A moderate Islamist party is a contradiction in terms where women's rights are concerned' Lina Abou-Habib stressed the critical need for states to base their law and governance on principles of universal equality and rights - not on religious principles or practices, in which the relationship between the sexes is seen as different and complementary.

While equality is often spoken of, fundamentally this idea of difference justifies many practices and norms which are of deep concern to all women's rights activists. Family laws, laws surrounding sexual and reproductive rights, inheritance and citizenship rights are all very vulnerable to attack and erosion from social and religious conservatives.

If the international community loses sight of the dangers inherent in governments informed by religious beliefs rather than human rights, not only does this place women's rights  at risk in such regimes, but also the rights of people from other religions and none.  Of course this lesson is shown in other regions and countries beyond MENA, and in relation to Christianity as well as Islam - for example in the United Kingdom, where the Anglican church continues to have a special relationship with the institution of the state.

Subscribers to Gender and Development can download the latest issue from Taylor & Francis Online. 

Non-subscribers can download the Citizenship issue of Gender & Development journal from this website.

Photo credit: Mosa'ab Elshamy