Kuwaiti circles received news that a decision had been issued to appoint women to the judiciary for the first time in the country's history, with great joy after a long struggle for women to obtain the rest of their rights, particularly the work in the judiciary.
Local press reports mentioned the results of the meeting held last week by the Supreme Judicial Council with the Public Prosecution, and among the most prominent results was the appointment of forty judges, including three women, who represent the first woman to work in the judicial field, in a decision expected to be issued in August.
In a statement to the local Al-Qabas newspaper, the former head of the judiciary, Counselor Faisal Al-Murshid, said, "The decision to accept Kuwaiti women in the judiciary as a public prosecutor five years ago came in accordance with our expectations that this day will come when women succeed in attaining justice."
The guide described the assumption by women of the judiciary on the historical day of Kuwaiti women, stressing that there is a lot of praise for them after the success of those who were chosen in the prosecution service.
Kuwaiti women continued to struggle for their rights until May 16, 2005, the day that a decree was issued granting women their political rights, so that they could vote in elections and contest their competitions alongside men.
In less than a month, specifically on June 12, 2005, Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah appointed Dr. Masouma Al-Mubarak as the first woman minister in the country's history to open the way for her to be in the executive branch.
Women in the Legislative Authority
The May 2009 elections resulted in a woman storming the legislative authority with the victory of four women for the first time in the history of Kuwait. They are Masuma Al Mubarak, Aseel Al Awadi, Rola Dashti and Salwa Al Jassar, all of whom are university professors.
And the judiciary remained insubordinate to women for several considerations, some of which are social and others are due to a juristic disagreement about whether the work in the judiciary is a work of the state, which prompted a former justice minister to refer to the Fatwa Department’s affiliation to the endowments that confirmed in the content of its fatwa that it is up to the guardian to decide What he deems appropriate.
Some jurists of the constitution also said that working in the judiciary is not a business of the state, and that it is a public job just like any other.
According to the lawyer, Azraa Al-Rifai, this step is a source of pride for women, and it came after a long struggle by Kuwaiti women that ended with the issuance of a decision by the Minister of Justice in 2014 to appoint 20 female prosecutors to be appointed at the time, which is the first step that paved the way for women to be placed on the judicial path.
The judge is appointed in Kuwait through two methods, the first of which is direct appointment, and the second is the appointment to the Public Prosecution by applying for a position as a legal researcher who is subject to extensive study for a year inside the Judicial Institute. After graduation, a decision is taken to transfer these researchers to the rank of deputy prosecutor, and then some of them are promoted after five years. Jdeideh judges, and others continue to be promoted to the Public Prosecution.
The non-appointment of a woman remained a constitutional suspect, which prompted lawyer Athraa Al-Rifai - in her speech to Al-Jazeera Net - to say that the woman’s access to the judicial platform is an application of the constitutional contract that stipulated in Article 29 to exercise her rights to justice and equality with her brother-in-law, as it came in implementation of Kuwait’s obligations International Convention on the Non-discrimination of sexes.
According to former Minister of Justice Jamal Shihab, the acceptance of a woman as a judge is a natural development after she was accepted as one of the legal researchers, and he believes that the Supreme Judicial Council can deal with women as a judge of jurisdiction, that is, in the personal and labor status and rent circles provided that they are nominated later to the more complicated departments.
Shehab confirms to Al Jazeera Net that the appointment is a right for the Supreme Judicial Council, which nominates and decides, but in some judicial levels, the matter requires the issuance of a decree of appointment.
Overcoming barriers
According to international political and human rights professor Ghanem Al-Najjar, the appointment of women as a judge has been much delayed, and there have been constant attempts to overcome the barriers.
Al-Najjar adds to Al-Jazeera Net that there is no doubt that appointing a woman as a judge would have come one day, given her success in many fields. At one time, the deans of colleges at Kuwait University were more numerous than men deans, and the longest term for the head of Kuwait University was from The share of a woman, Dr. Faiza Al-Kharafi.
According to Al-Najjar, the woman has a long way to complete the rest of her rights, foremost of which is her right to grant citizenship to her children and her husband similar to men, as well as ending some forms of discrimination in salaries and denying her the right to sign documents for performing surgeries for her parents or even remove them from hospitals when necessary, as well as not to consider It has a sponsor from government agencies in the event that the children send scholarships to study abroad, which is a procedure that requires the presence of a sponsor who is obliged to pay what the state pays in some cases of the scholarship default.
The first female lawyer in the history of Kuwait in the category of blind-sighted Hanadi Al-Omani opposes the step that a woman takes over the judiciary because the woman is emotional in nature, and also given the volatile psychological conditions that she passes and which can affect the rulings issued by her, in addition to the legal aspect related to the permissibility of her assumption or not.
Al-Omani believes in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net that the woman’s work in the legal profession differs from the judiciary, as she can avoid working on certain days or assign her duties to another colleague, but this will become difficult to resort to in the judiciary.
Kuwait has become within sight of itself to become the fourth Gulf country to allow women to work in the judiciary, after Bahrain preceded it in 2006, followed by the UAE in 2008 and then Qatar in the year 2010.