Experts list recommendations to be included in Jordan periodic review

DEAD SEA — Safeguarding the rights of children, women and persons with disabilities was among the recommendations that activists demanded to be included in the Jordan's Universal Periodic Review 2018, to be presented in Geneva in November.

The demand came during a two-day workshop on the 3rd Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Jordan which witnessed the attendance of legal experts, stakeholders, civil society organisations, and national and international human rights institutions.

The workshop, which was held in the Dead Sea area, was organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Amman and UPR Info, Geneva, Switzerland.

Other recommendations included calls for gender equality in wages, allowing foreign workers to join labour unions, moving torture cases to be tried in civilian courts rather than police courts and training law enforcement officials on human rights values and practices.

The participants also called for the right of Jordanian women married to non-Jordanians to pass on their citizenship to their spouses and children.

Currently, only Jordanian men are allowed to pass the Jordanian citizenship to their children and foreign wives.

The aim of the workshop was to support the Jordanian civil society with the technical knowledge and tools so that they can write effective and compelling reports from the civil society’s perspective, which will influence the recommendations of the state in Geneva in November, according to the organisers.

UPR Info programme manager, Aoife Hegarty, said that all recommendations will be reviewed because “our aim is to help in refining the recommendations and ensuring they are smart and in accordance with UN standards”.

"Smart" means that they are specific, achievable, measurable, relevant and time bound, Hegarty explained.

“This is an opportunity for the civil society to feed into the report and provide information on the human rights situation in Jordan,” she told The Jordan Times.

The next step, Hegarty added, will be to prepare the report and meet with government entities to provide them with feedback, as they are currently preparing the national report.

“As part of this process, the government should give the civil society the opportunity to feed into its report,” Hegarty explained.

She said other activities that will take place in Jordan will focus on “advocacy from the civil society perspective so that we can share our information with the diplomatic community in a compelling way”.

FES programme officer, Maha Qashou, said that “we are focusing on the civil society and its report on human rights from 2013 to 2018”.

“The government will meet with the local organisations to discuss the recommendations and decide to either endorse or postpone it,” Qashou explained.

"The idea is to unite the efforts and voices of local organisations working on human rights issues in Jordan to come up with a strong report to be submitted in Geneva later this year,” Qashou told The Jordan Times. 

UPR is a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council aimed at improving the human rights situation on the ground of each of the 193 UN member states, according to its website.

Under this mechanism, the human rights situation of each UN member state is reviewed every five years.