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provide women with greater access to education and employment

These efforts by the state have run against Libya's extremely conservative patriarchal tr

ditions and tribal culture, which continue to foster gender discrimination.

or example, women still face unequal treatment in many aspects of family law.

o not permit any genuinely independent organizations or political groups to exist. Membership in any group or organization that is not sanctioned by the state is punishable by death under Law No. 71 of 1972. There are a number of women's organizations in Libya that purport to be independent, but they are all in fact closely linked to the state. Consequently, their efforts to promote women's emancipation have yielded little progress.

promote a greater awareness of domestic violence and the fact that more women are entering the workforce.

government temporarily restricted women from leaving the country without their male guardian, a step that the authorities later denied.

Libya has no constitution

aws and key declarations

1977 Declaration of the Authority of the People and the 1988 Great Green Charter of Human Rights in the Age of the Masses (Great Green Charter).

In addition, Article 1 of Law No. 20 of 1991

Women have been eligible to become judges since 1981, although they remain underrepresented in the judiciary. The first female judge was appointed in 1991, and currently there are an estimated 50 female judges

An adult woman is recognized as a full person before the court and is equal to a man throughout all stages of litigation and legal proceedings. However, in some instances, women are not considered to be as authentic witnesses as men.

Libya acceded to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1989. At that time, it made reservations to Article 2 and Article 16, in relation to rights and responsibilities in marriage, divorce, and parenthood, on the grounds that these articles should be applied without prejudice to Shari'a. Libya made an additional general reservation in 1995, declaring that no aspect of accession can conflict with the laws of personal status derived from Shari'a.[15]

In June 2004, Libya became the first country in the Arab region to ratify the Optional Protocol to CEDAW.[16] The protocol allows Libyan groups and individuals to petition the UN CEDAW committee if they believe their rights under the convention have been violated.[17] However, because the committee can only issue nonbinding recommendations to states in response to these petitions, the practical effects of the protocol remain unclea

There are no genuinely independent nongovernmental women's rights groups in Libya. Several women's organizations claim to be independent, such as Al-Wafa Association for Human Services, which seeks to improve the status of women and "to further women's education and social standing."[18] However, all such organizations have close ties to the authorities. The charity Al-Wattasimu, for example, organized an international conference on women's rights in Tripoli in April 2007. Participants sought to draft new concepts and principles on women's rights and "to realize a strategic support group project for African women."[19] Al-Wattasimu is run by Aisha al-Qadhafi, the daughter of Muammar al-Qadhafi.

zations claim to be independent, such as Al-Wafa Association for Human Services, which seeks to improve the status of

has encoura

ged women to participate in the workforce and to exercise their economic rights.

Society in general still considers women's primary role to be in the home. While more young women in Libya aspire to pursue professional careers, their working lives are often cut short when they marry.

Their political rights and civic voice remain extremely limited on account of the nature of the regime and the fact that all political activity must be sanctioned by the authorities. Recent years have brought no real change in this respect, and women continue to play a marginal role in state institutions. For example, just 36 women gained s

eats in the 468-seat General People's Congress in the March 2009 indirect elections

Women remain underrepresented in the judiciary, with none serving on the Supreme Court

nces. For all its discourse on women's rights, the regime clearly remains extremely reluctant to appoint women to senior positions.

Women are even less likely to participate in the Basic People's Congresses in rural areas, and in some cases those who do attend choose to do so indirectly on account of conservative social attitudes.

Women have gained access to new sources of information in recent years, but the extent to which they can use this information to empower themselves in their civic and pol

itical lives remains limited by the general restrictions on independent political activity.

gime. Women increasingly use the Internet as a source of information, though satellite television, which is more accessible, is the most influential medium

t the same time, social and cultural attitudes are being influenced by growing access to satellite television and the Internet, and by a partial opening in the domestic media, which has led to an increased awareness of women's issues and greater room for discussion. The expansion of mobile telephone access has also give

n women a greater degree of freedom, especially in dealings with the opposite sex.

he most significant setback since Haftar launched an assault on Tripoli in April 2019, with the backing of France, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Russia

With Turkey deploying ever-increasing numbers of ethnically Turkish Syrian troops on the ground and drones in the skies, the GNA has dealt the LNA a series of setbacks since the start of April. 

Wattiyah had played a key role for Haftar, whose forces seized the air base in 2014, not only because it served as a key operations center for his assault on the Libyan capital but because it was one of the few former Libyan Air Force facilities spared from airstrikes in the 2011 NATO intervention, due the fact it had stored mostly decommissioned aircraft. Haftar had since restored many of the decommissioned jets to service.

the LNA’s closest air base is in Jufrah, some 490 km away from Tripoli in central Libya. The city of Tarhouna, 180 km southeast of Tripoli, is the LNA’s sole remaining stronghold for the assault on the capital.

A high-ranking GNA military source close to Osama al-Juwaili, who hails from the western city of Zintan and led the GNA forces attack on Wattiyah yesterday, told Mada Masr yesterday that the attack was carried out in coordination with Zintani forces aligned with Haftar inside the air base. 

After GNA forces took the air base, they posted images online of what they claimed were captured Russian-made Pantsir air defense systems mounted on trucks as well as manuals on how to use the equipment. 

“The Russians are not at all amused with some of the images that have been shared of the GNA troops capturing Russian weapons,” the Egyptian official says.

The GNA continued to make advances on Tuesday, seizing the towns of Jawsh, Badr and Tiji — all on the outskirts of the Nafusa Mountains — from LNA control. The GNA forces remain engaged in clashes to try to take the city of Asabiah, a crucial city along the LNA’s supply line and strategic location for Haftar’s forces located near Gharyan, the site of Haftar’s former main operations center. 

The Libyan political source who is close to Haftar says that the UAE, after consulting with Egypt, has called on the United Kingdom to intervene to support the political roadmap put forward by Aguila Saleh, the head of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives who was once a strong supporter of Haftar but is now vying for a larger stake in the political scene himself and moving against the general.

“What the spring of 2020 has revealed is that the UAE doesn’t possess the military or diplomatic wherewithal to continue protecting and strengthening Haftar’s ongoing offensive on Tripoli,” Harchaoui says. “Militarily and in terms of strategic savvy, the UAE is no match to NATO member Turkey, especially knowing that the latter enjoys Washington’s tacit acquiescence these days, over a year after the White House’s initial green light to Haftar. Meanwhile, the Russian state has just never provided the strategic support it could have, if it had genuine faith in Haftar’s adventure.”

none of this means that the UAE will necessarily tamp down its ambitions to take control of Tripoli. “The UAE will never relent or abandon this old obsession, even if it takes another decade — Libya is just too important from a Sunni-Arab perspective,”

if these states do discard Haftar, it will be a way for them to freshen up their stance and restore a tiny bit of their credibility by pretending it was Haftar’s fault all along. One must note that Russia will come out of this re-adjustment stronger and more influential in eastern Libya

Egypt is extremely worried that GNA-affiliated troops could head further east toward Egypt’s western border with Libya

Despite the president’s rhetoric, multiple Egyptian officials that have spoken to Mada Masr in recent weeks say that Egypt will not engage in a direct confrontation with Turkey in Libya, as long as Turkey keeps affiliated militias far away from the Egyptian borders

public support for Haftar is eroding, as there are increasing talks among a popular federalist current in the east of the country to withdraw support for Haftar’s war effort

In urban areas, like downtown Benghazi, some militias — which are not unlike those in Tripoli — will also feel emboldened, and may be tempted to break away from the LNA, a structure that has been hyper personalized by Haftar.

According to the UN special mission’s acting head, 58 civilians were killed and more than 100 wounded between April 1 and May 8, a significant increase in the number of civilian victims compared to the first three months of the year. Most of these casualties, according to Williams, could be attributed to Haftar’s forces, who have been carrying out indiscriminate bombing of the capital in recent weeks. 

Forces affiliated with the GNA have meted out harsh reprisals in the past. In 2012, Misrata forces besieged the city of Bani Walid, a stronghold for loyalists to former ruler Muammar Qadhafi, displacing thousands of families. Similar scenes surfaced when GNA forces took the cities of Sorman and Sabratha to the west of Tripoli in mid-April, stoking concerns of further reprisals.