International law, mixed marriage, and the law of succession in North Africa: "...but some are more equal than others"

Abstract

This article deals with the issues of equality in the countries of the Maghreb and Egypt, where inequality in inheritance and with respect to interreligious marriage is of major significance. As a result, international agreements and international law take on a fluid character according to the whim of existing political systems, where legislators fluctuate between cultural particularism and the need to set themselves within the modernist movement. Yet how can one claim to be modernising countries in which half of the citizens have a truncated status and reservations attached to international agreements raise insuperable barriers against any change premised on equality between men and women? The considerations offered here start from legislation in four Muslim countries with a view to assessing the likelihood that international agreements might one day bring such countries not merely to comply with them but also to give women the place that is theirs by right.