Webinar: A Critical Feminist Reading of the Agenda for Sustainable Development in light of the current stage in the Arab region
Webinar: A Critical Feminist Reading of the Agenda for Sustainable Development in light of the current stage in the Arab region
Please click here to read the report.
On Thursday, March 20, 2025, the Women's Working Group of the Arab NGO Network for Development held a virtual symposium titled "A Critical Feminist Reading of the Agenda for Sustainable Development in light of the current stage in the Arab region". The seminar reviewed the current stage a decade after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (2030), with a focus on Goal 5 on gender equality and the extent of its achievement. The meeting featured Dr. Mohammed Al-Saadi, an economist, independent consultant, and university professor at major universities in Morocco, and Dr. Howayda Adly, a professor of political science at the National Center for Social and Criminological Research in Egypt. The meeting was moderated by Dr. Jihan Abu Zeid, a researcher and consultant.
The seminar discussed the shocking gap between the digital achievements announced about women's empowerment in the Arab region and the reality that women live under wars, conflicts, neoliberalism, and corruption. The seminar pointed out that a quarter of countries in the region are still under the weight of armed conflicts, as well as water and electricity privatisation policies that have turned basic rights into commercialised commodities, and regimes neglect of development plans. Authoritarian development plans restrict freedoms and in favour of specific groups. The speakers also highlighted the challenges facing women in the Arab region, from being expelled from their land in favour of investment projects, their labour in the shadow economy without rights, to being marginalized as displaced women in reconstruction plans. The seminar also discussed the catastrophic conditions in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon and Yemen, where infrastructures are crumbling and maternal mortality rates are high while 70 per cent of women in Gaza live below the poverty line.
As well as that, unfair trade agreements, such as Agadir, have destroyed the livelihoods of two million women in agriculture and forestry and the privatisation of water in Jordan has transformed the right to women workers in Egypt have been forced to accept wages a commodity, while female workers in Egypt were forced to accept very low wages, without health insurance. Meanwhile, the privatization of water in Jordan turned a basic human right into an expensive commodity, while female workers in Egypt face low wages and no social security guarantees.
Please click here to read the report, which includes highlights from the interventions of Dr. Mohammed Al-Saadi and Dr. Howayda Adly, as well as recommendations from partner organizations and participants.
You can watch the recording on our YouTube page.
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