Their mother's country

The Nationality Law may change sooner than anyone anticipated. Reem Leila discovers the compromises and victories it could embody
Reforming the law to allow women who marry foreigners to pass on citizenship to their children has been an uphill battle, because it touches on issues ranging from prostitution to national security. The wives and children of Egyptian men are granted Egyptian citizenship automatically; but Egyptian women cannot pass their nationality on to anyone.
Shahida El-Baz, a researcher and consultant in political economy and an activist on women's issues, has a daughter, Dana, who cannot obtain an Egyptian passport because her father is Ethiopian. Mahasen, a vegetable vendor, has the same problem. Mahasen's child, however, recently obtained her mother's nationality, while Dana cannot. To give her child citizenship -- and the benefits that go with it, from subsidised health care to education in a state school -- Mahasen perjured herself in court, claiming that her non-Egyptian husband had falsified his identity card (which he presented to the authorities when they were married), and that she therefore had no idea who he really was. According to the Nationality Law (law 26/1975), in cases where a child's (non-Egyptian) father is unknown, the child receives his or her (Egyptian) mother's nationality.
Women's organisations have taken up such cases to highlight the need for new nationality laws, arguing that the existing legislation discriminates against women and harms children.
Aged 11, Joseph Aladdin Huber won his opening match in the national tennis championship for young players. His happiness was short-lived: the referee disqualified him, because Joseph's father is Austrian.
Iman Wahid was dismissed from school when she was 13. The administration of the elementary school she attended had somehow overlooked the fact that her father is Saudi Arabian, but this mistake was rectified by the time she reached prep school. Her family could not afford the higher tuition "foreigners" must pay. Her formal education effectively ended that day.
Fawziya Abdel-Sattar, professor of law at Cairo University and head of the legislative committee of the National Council for Women (NCW), says the current legislation has "led to a situation where children born in Egypt to non-Egyptian fathers are treated as foreigners." Lawyers are trying to take one case all the way to the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), to argue that the current Nationality Law violates the Constitution, which guarantees equal rights to all Egyptians, men and women alike.
Yet many continue to argue that granting nationality to a child whose father is foreign is incompatible with Islamic legislation, which stipulates that children must be named after their father. Zeinab Radwan, dean of Cairo University's Dar Al-Uloum (Fayoum branch) and deputy chairwoman of the legislative committee of the NCW, retorts that this has nothing to do with nationality. "Nationality is an issue that is tackled by temporal laws. Granting or denying nationality is decided in accordance with the interests of society, as perceived by policy-makers."
According to lawyer Mona Zulficar, a member of the legislative committee of the NCW, granting Egyptian women the right to pass on their nationality to their offspring should be a national objective. "According to the current law, every child born to an Egyptian father is an Egyptian citizen. The same should be true of every child born to an Egyptian mother," she argues.
The new draft law also discriminates in some fields, but on different grounds. For instance, it denies Egyptian nationality to children whose father is Palestinian, but they will be treated as Egyptian citizens, required to pay the same school and university fees as Egyptians and allowed to seek employment in government institutions. So why can they not obtain a passport? Because the Arab League's decree 1547 of 1959 calls for the preservation of Palestinian identity. The bill, furthermore, requires that children of a foreign father choose between Egyptian citizenship and the father's nationality once they reach the age of 21. Citing national security considerations, the draft also forbids children of foreign fathers to enter the Egyptian army and bars them from certain government posts.
In the case of children younger than 21, their mother will have to submit an official request to the Ministry of Interior; the minister will have one year to respond, and will enjoy "the right to refuse or accept the request. In most cases, the refusal will be for security reasons," predicts Adel Afifi, head of the Passport, Immigration and Nationality Administration. If the individual petitioning for Egyptian nationality is over 21 years old, s/he can apply independently.
Within the coming few weeks, the NCW's legislative committee will have completed the nationality bill, which must also be submitted for approval to the ministries of justice and interior. "These procedures must take place quickly, because if the SCC rules that the current law is unconstitutional in the case filed before it, there will be a commotion. The new law must be ready before then, so there is great chance that the People's Assembly will review it in its current session," says Zulficar.
According to Afifi, any reservations the Ministry of Justice may have expressed would have involved national security considerations. "This problem was addressed by including the minister of interior's right to vet nationality requests," he added.
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