Tunisia charter to uphold equality, freedom of opinion
Baku, January 7 (AZERTAC). Tunisia voted Monday to enshrine gender equality in its draft constitution, a key step towards safeguarding its relatively progressive laws on women's rights, with the ruling Islamists under pressure to compromise.
"All male and female citizens have the same rights and duties. They are equal before the law without discrimination," states article 20 of the text, which was approved by 159 lawmakers out of the 169 who voted.
The formula was agreed between the ruling Islamist party Ennahda and the secular opposition during negotiations to end months of political crisis that followed the assassination of an opposition politician by suspected jihadists last year.
Ennahda sparked a storm of controversy in 2012 when it tried to introduce gender "complementarity" rather than equality into the post-uprising constitution.
Since the 1950s, when it gained independence from France, Tunisia has had the Arab world's most progressive laws on women's rights -- although men remain privileged notably over inheritance -- and some suspected Ennahda of wanting to roll back those rights.
The Islamists also agreed in recent months to drop their insistence on Islam being the main source of legislation, or criminalising "attacks on the sacred".
Instead, Islam is recognised as the state religion and freedom of conscience is guaranteed.
On Sunday, the assembly also forced a successful revote on a proposed amendment that would make it unlawful to accuse someone of apostasy, after a deputy claimed he had received death threats because a colleague accused him of being an "enemy of Islam".
Analysts say the ruling Islamist party has had to adapt its more conservative positions to avoid alienating liberal Tunisians.
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