This chapter examines the 2004 Moroccan Family Code governing marriage, divorce, marital property, child custody guardianship, and parentage. The enactment process, which included a multi-stakeholder Royal Commission and Parliamentary debate, and was marked by unprecedented public mobilization for and against reforms, marked a break with the previous Personal Status Code. Multiple references in the law to international human rights standards, positive law, and religious precepts create a certain legal schizophrenia and inconsistent decisions across jurisdictions. While substantial reforms were made on the face of the law, in particular to provisions regarding marriage, substantial inequality and discrimination persist, particularly in unequal access to divorce for women, financial relationships between spouses, and child custody and guardianship. International human rights bodies and local activists alike have highlighted the need for further revisions to the Family Code to abolish remaining inequality. Since 2011, Morocco has been led by an Islamist-majority governmental coalition opposed to further Family Code reform, raising questions about the relationship between democracy and women’s rights.

The Lebanese family law system characterized by legal and judicial pluralism controls major aspects of a woman’s rights such as marital, child custody and social rights. While issues of personal status are exclusively left to religious courts and sectarian legislation, it is undeniable that women in Lebanon, are left at the whim of not only an entrenched religious establishment but also cultural norms of patriarchy. Historical practices of Islamic family law issues find little premise in shari’a but rather in the interpretation and implementation thereof. Thus, opening the door to activism and Islamic jurisprudential approach could bring change on religiously delicate issues. In pursuit of gender equality, efforts to reform laws and break the status quo have in certain instances proved successful, yet the transition to a secular personal status law system at the image of Lebanon’s progressive civil society, is far from being reached.

The 1959 Iraqi Personal Status Code was controversial at enactment, and it remains so to this day. Some of the controversy relates to its progressive elements, which include a ban on child marriage, expanded child custody rights granted to mothers, and limitations on polygamy. Another significant dimension to the controversy, less remarked upon in scholarly and media circles, concerns the extent to which the Iraqi state should have the power to legislate at all with respect to personal status matters, and instead to defer to traditional religious authorities for rulemaking. This chapter highlights some of the key rules of the Personal Status Code, its evolution over time, its treatment in the courts, and the controversies that continue to surround it. The chapter shows that in many ways, the challenges facing the Personal Status Code reflect the cleavages that have posed an existential threat to Iraq since its creation.

This chapter examines the development of the Jordanian Personal Status Law (JPSL) from the Ottoman Family Rights Law (1917) to the 2019 reforms. It provides an overview of the main changes which the JPSL has undergone. Centrally, the chapter argues that most changes have not been progressive in terms of leading to greater gender equality or justice. In addition to being discriminatory in terms of sex, the JPSL also enshrines class hierarchies. Where alterations have been made, they have not touched the overall rationale of the law. There were no efforts to revisit the sources of the law, to rethink certain assumptions which were based on seventh-century Arabian society, or stem from conservative colonial European jurisprudence, or to think of alternative "Islamic versions." Unlike their Ottoman predecessors, Jordanian legislators have stayed clear from rethinking the JPSL in terms of current times and requirements.

This chapter examines the 1984 Algerian Family Code and 2005 amendments governing marriage, divorce, marital property, child custody and guardianship, and parentage. Both the original Code and the amendments faced substantial challenges in their enactment and were drawn out over decades. Algerian women’s groups have had to advocate for reforms in a difficult context involving an entrenched state bureaucracy, military dominance, a decade long civil war between security forces and armed Islamist groups, discrimination against the Amazigh, and major natural disasters. The Code perpetuates inequality and discrimination against women, including limited access by women to divorce, the persistence of polygamy and unilateral divorce at will by the husband. 2005 amendments to the Code were only enacted by Presidential ordinance after legislative deadlock; women’s groups note that the reforms reflect concessions to the Islamists, by maintaining the mandatory presence of the male marital guardian (wali) for women at marriage.

Palestinians fall under a dizzying array of laws and courts, which adjudicate their personal status matters. The specific court or law that applies depends both on the religious/communal identity of the person and the area in which the person lives. Those who are residing in the State of Israel as it existed before 1967 are governed by Israeli laws. The Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have also been under Israeli law since the 1967 Occupation. This chapter concerns the personal status law for those Palestinians who are living in the two other main areas – the West Bank and Gaza. Those living in the West Bank are governed by Jordanian Personal Status Law. Those in Gaza are governed by the Egyptian Law on Family Rights. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the respective family laws will be unified in the near future given political and legislative paralysis in Palestine.

Achieving alterations in the status of women’s rights is a difficult long-term process around the world. A key area remains personal status or family law. Marriage, divorce, and child custody remain at the core of many women’s existence, and influence possibilities in education, employment, and politics as well. The Middle East is an area where personal status law is strongly based on religious practices in most countries. This book queries what is the status of family law in selected nations in the region affected by the Arab Spring 2010–-011. This book covers Muslim family law in the following countries: Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, ebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and Qatar. It does not appear that major change in personal status has occurred in most countries. This introduction first highlights changes that occurred during the Arab Spring especially in certain countries, and the status of women at that time. Then, it provides an overview of the chapters featured. The conclusion provides some lessons learned.

After the 2011 Arab uprisings, Egypt adopted a new constitution in 2014 that strengthened the principle of equality between men and women. In spite of its call on the State to achieve equality in all areas, family law continues to establish significant differences between wives and husbands within the couple. This contribution examines the reforms introduced in Egyptian personal status law since the beginning of the twentieth century and the differences based on gender that remain in both marriage and divorce rights and stresses how governments had to present the reforms as taking place within the shari’a in order to avoid their rejection by conservative religious circles and society.

This chapter offers an overview of the sustained reforms of Islamic family law that occurred in Tunisia from the 1950s to 2020. Organized historically, it traces developments during major time periods starting with the end of colonial rule in 1956 and ending with the aftermath of the 2010/11 Arab Spring that ushered a process of democratization in the last decade. Considering marriage, divorce and custody, we present the reforms that placed Tunisia at the vanguard of the Arab world in regard to liberalizing family law and women’s rights. We argue that sustained reforms were possible because succeeding regimes found it in their best interests to pursue a reformist policy. Since most reforms were initiated by state builders and state actors, we refer to them as “politics from above” in contrast to the “politics from below” that started in earnest with women’s activism in the later periods.

More and more research is being done that attempts to explain the characteristics, dynamics and consequences of ceasefires. However, in general, ceasefires still remain primarily seen as a way to stop or reduce the overt use of violence and as a preliminary and provisional step in a teleology from war towards peace. Based on the text of ceasefire agreements and the military and political power disparity between signatories at the time an agreement is signed, this chapter presents a broader way of defining and categorising ceasefires. In doing this, the assumption is the mirror image of Carl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is politics by other means. Actors in civil wars do not only use violence as a way to annihilate their opponents but also use ceasefires to influence a range of other contested areas where actors (armed and other) hope to assert their authority i.e. “peace” or ceasefires are perhaps war by other means too.

The different dynamics created by ceasefires discussed throughout this book challenge many of the basic, frequently unstated assumptions about how ceasefires are used as part of a particular political process that supposedly moves violence towards peace. This book argued that ceasefires are often not the humanitarian, purely positive or beneficial tools they have long been considered to be. In many cases, ceasefires are not simply a “cease fire’ but rather interject into complex contestations for control of the state. As such, this final chapter presents actionable recommendations for practitioners about how ceasefires interject into much broader and more complex processes. Ceasefires are not only used as military tools to stop violence but political tools actors in civil wars use for their own statebuilding ends. These ends are invariably much broader than winning or losing militarily and need to be considered when making decisions relating to, for example, mediation, foreign aid, humanitarian access, development, reconstruction, migration and refugee intakes.