Minister Safadi backs My Nationality campaign
A delegation from My Nationality is A Right for Me and My Family Campaign discussed yesterday with the new minister of state for women and youth empowerment, Violette Safadi, the amendment of the current nationality law to the end of ensuring Lebanese women’s right to confer nationality to family members. The delegation handed the minister a complete file including its demands and the draft bill of the desired egalitarian nationality law (c.f: https://bit.ly/2THGqNW). Both sides tackled the legal discrimination embedded in the law and its impact on Lebanese women and their families. In turn, Minister Safadi expressed her full backing to this demand but in a pragmatic way, which secures the implementation and ratification of the bill, so as to not remain subject to political interference and void promises. The file, Safadi maintained, will be put on the table of discussion to be addressed soon, pointing out that the right of the Lebanese woman to pass on nationality to her children is a natural right of her and can be established only through the law. In response to a question on the outcomes of its meetings with officials and political parties to this effect, My Nationality Campaign told Safadi that since the recent parliamentary elections, only PSP MP Hadi Abul Hissen came forward with a draft law, but still awaiting its referral to the concerned committees. In the same vein, Abul Hissen tweeted on March 11 calling on all political factions to cooperate in the Legislature to enact an all-inclusive and fair nationality law that plays fair to women. He also thanked My Nationality Campaign for its follow-up on the issue. (My Nationality Facebook page, An Nahar, March 12, 14, 2019)