Union women and Solidarity Center partners from the Middle East and North Africa spearheaded a petition calling for governments to ratify International Labor Organization Convention 190, the landmark global labor standard adopted in June 2019 to eliminate violence and harassment in the world of work, including gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH).
“The idea of starting a petition arose during the seminar we held as a collective, ‘Women for the Dignity and Rights of Women’ [where] women from different Arab countries presented their efforts to get their countries to ratify Convention 190,” says Touriya Lahrech, president of the Morocco Contributions Forum, a Solidarity Center partner.
Unions and civil society organizations launched the petition in conjunction with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meetings and the Generation Equality Forum in March. Activists from Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen who comprise the Coalition for Women’s Rights and Dignity coordinated with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to host the online petition.
The petition is available in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.