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North Africa and the Near and Middle East

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) but I shall not go into Tuaregs and Tornados. I shall immediately go into the election that is taking place today in Egypt. It seems that there is a large turnout for the election, with queues at polling stations. For most Egyptians it must have a similar impact to that of the first democratic elections that took place in South Africa after the end of apartheid—another large African country undergoing a process of transformation—but there are, of course, significant differences. The election in Egypt today is about establishing a constituent assembly, from which 100 people will be chosen to draft a constitution. That will be followed by a presidential election, the date of which has just, reluctantly, under pressure from the streets, been announced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces—12 March next year. We will not know the outcome of the elections until they are verified and adjudicated by lawyers, and the result will not be known until January. That is worrying. We saw from what happened in Afghanistan a year ago how legal challenges to elections and disputes about the validity of the vote and about candidatures can lead to great complications when a body is established. We have also seen in other countries disputed elections leading to severe delays. I am worried about that and other difficult processes that Egypt has to go through. As has already been said, Egypt has a very large young population, high levels of youth unemployment and an economy that is in decline and could go into an even more serious decline because so much of the revenue is built upon tourism and foreign investment that may not come about because of the uncertainty and instability that are developing. At the same time, there are worrying developments in the nature of the political process that has been established. There was a democratic election in Tunisia under a formula whereby 50% of the candidates had to be women. That led to an elected Parliament in Tunisia which reflects the fact that in Tunisian society under the previous regime women played an important role. There is much greater equality overtly between men and women in that country. Even though the Islamist party Ennahda has come out as the largest political grouping, there are some positive signs about the continuation of women's role within the political process in Tunisia. The same cannot be said of the situation that has developed in Egypt. A helpful research paper produced by the Library points out that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces in Egypt is distinctly conservative in its approach to women's representation. Under the old electoral system in Egypt 64 parliamentary seats were reserved for women. That law was abolished by the military regime. In its place is a provision that every party list must include at least one woman. That is an extremely worrying development. It has also been decided that there will be no requirement for any women's representation on the committee that will be established to draft the constitution, and there is only one woman in the present Egyptian Cabinet of 28. That raises serious concerns about where Egypt will go after today's elections and the constituent assembly that is established in future, and what kind of society there will be in the post-Mubarak era. Further concerns have been expressed by many of the demonstrators in Tahrir square about religious tolerance and what might develop in the future in a country where a significant proportion of the population—more than 10%—are Coptic Christians. There has been a series of attacks on Christian places of worship and on Christian ceremonies. Other worrying developments include statements from some of the more extreme Islamist groups about the kind of society and kind of laws that will emerge and whether minorities will continue to be tolerated in Egyptian society. The international community must be resolute. We should send clear messages to the newly elected Egyptian political establishment when it is announced and also to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that there are international standards that we expect a democratic Egypt to uphold, and that the international community's response to the changes in Egypt will be shaped by the treatment of minorities and women in Egyptian society.