November 01, 2007	Thursday	Shawwal 19, 1428

LONDON, Oct 31: Religion and culture are no excuse for the suppression of women’s rights, the wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair said in a keynote speech on Wednesday.

Cherie Blair, a leading human rights lawyer, singled out Egypt and some orthodox Jewish communities as well as nations in south Asia and Africa for particular criticism over their treatment of women.

The issue of gender equality is “a matter of simple justice or, to be unfashionably unapologetic about it, a matter of right and wrong”, Blair told an audience at the Chatham House international affairs think-tank in London.

“I believe our shared humanity prescribes equality and that any limitation based on this equality is a direct insult to our dignity,” she added.

As examples, she listed separate divorce systems for men and women in Egypt, the situation in some orthodox Jewish communities where only men can initiate a divorce and the treatment of widows as “second class citizens or the bearers of bad luck to the community” in some south Asian and African countries. Amnesty International released a dossier on human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia highlighting that women face “pervasive discrimination” and that domestic violence is “widespread”.—AFP