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Gender Politics in Tunisia and Libya 

March 09, 2021 6:00 p.m.
ONLINE
Casa Árabe’s YouTube channel. 6:00 p.m.
In Spanish and Arabic, with simultaneous translation.

To mark the occasion os Women’s Month, we will be holding this round table discussion on Tuesday, March 9, with the participation os two women who are experts on these North African countries. 

As in the rest of the world, gender equality in the Arab world is far from being achieved both for legal reasons and because of the important role played by customs and traditions which relegate women in many respects compared with men.  However, the situation is not exactly the same in  all Arab countries. Whilst in some countries little or very little progress has been made on the path towards achieving equality, in others quite a bit of encouraging progress has been made. 

In order to discuss this important issue, as part of Women’s Month, Casa Árabe is organizing a round table discussion specifically to analyze the situation in Tunisia, one of the most advanced countries in terms of gender equality, and in Libya, a country mired in a lengthy armed conflict which has had an especially strong impact on the situation of women.  Participating in the round table will be Begoña Lasagabaster, the representative of UN-Women for Tunisia and Libya; Yosra Fraoues, the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, and Libyan activist Wafia Saifalnasr, who has been very involved in her country’s political life in recent times.

Yosra Fraoues is a lawyer and human rights activist. She is the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women and delegate of the International Federation for Human Rights in Tunisia. She has taken part as a legal expert in the drafting of texts on the democratic transition, as well as in the drafting of the Law against violence against women approved in 2017. She is also a trainer specialized in the field of human rights in general, and of women's rights in particular. She is the author and co-author of books on the subject equality.

Begoña Lassgabaster is Country Representative UN Women Libya and Tunisia. With over 20 years of professional experience, she was a member of the Spanish parliament for 12 years, followed by a stint at the European Parliament. Lasagabaster has helped establish more than 150 laws in areas of women's rights, gender equality law, elimination of violence against women, international development and cooperation, justice, and economic and social rights.
 
Wafia A. Saifalnasr is a Libyan political activist. She was a founding member of the Libyan platform Women for peace. She holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration and a Master in Software Engineering. She was an advisor to former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan.