International Women’s Day, 2021

The world celebrates today, Monday, March 8, International Women’s Day[i], an occasion to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women, who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities. Despite the achievements made in many countries in promoting women’s rights and equal rights between men and women, however in many countries of the world women still face many obstacles, especially in the field of work, participation in public life, and in their personal security.

In the job markets around the world, the gap between women’s and men’s income for the same job remains, according to the International Labour Organization[ii], “On average, women earn 77% of what men earn.” In Parliaments, in 2019, the proportion of women parliamentarians was no more than 25%. One in three women still suffers from gender-based violence.

In Libya, due to the deterioration of the security situation as a result of armed conflicts, women’s rights in Libya have regressed on several levels, especially with regard to the standard of living and violence. In 2020 the crime of enforced disappearances, targeting Libyan women based on the actual or perceived affiliation of some members of their political families, continued unabated[iii]. In April 2020, a group of women were abducted and disappeared in the town of Tarhuna. Some of them their relatives were opposed to a local militia in the city, known as al-Kaniyat and allied with Khalifa Haftar during the attack on the capital, Tripoli[iv].

The fate of Dr. Siham Sergewa, a member of the House of Representatives for Benghazi, is still unknown, despite international calls to reveal her fate. Dr. Siham was kidnapped by an armed group, affiliated with the Tariq Bin Ziyad Battalion[v], commanded by one of Khalifa Haftar’s sons, from her home in Benghazi in the early hours of July 17, 2019. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya described in a press release[vi] the kidnapping of Dr. Sergewa as: “a clear attempt to silence one of Libya’s prominent female voices and to intimidate other women seeking to participate in the country’s political life”[vii].