The National Council for Public Liberties and Human Rights (NCPLHR) in Tripoli, Libya, held a panel discussion titled “The Legal Framework of Women’s Right to Inheritance and the Challenges of Implementation”.
The session, held in August, discussed women’s right to inheritance under Islamic law, practical applications of inheritance distribution, and the criminal and civil protections of this right.
The panel was attended by the Minister of State for Women’s Affairs, the Advisor to the President of the NCPLHR, the Director of the Experts Office at the General Authority for Monitoring Media Content, as well as academics and representatives from the Ministry of Interior’s Human Rights Office, the Tripoli Bar Association, the Ministry of Justice, Ihqaq Organization for Sustainable Development, and Tadamon Organization for Women’s Advocacy.
During the session, the Director of the Experts Office at the General Authority for Monitoring Media Content noted that the Authority has observed a lack of media attention in Libya to the issue of women being deprived of inheritance — a form of economic violence against women. He explained that since 2022, only a few written media outlets have covered the topic. The first report appeared in “February newspaper” in March 2014, while the second investigation — by journalist Maher Al Shaeri with ARIJ — was published in 2024 by the Libyan Center for Investigative Journalism. He also noted that the issue had not been discussed in Libyan media before 2011, despite Law No. 6 of 1959, enacted nearly 70 years ago, which criminalizes depriving women of their inheritance rights.
ARIJ’s investigation, “Libyan Patriarchal Customs Deny Women Their Rights to Inheritance” by journalist Maher Al Shaeri, published in February 2024, exposes a traditional practice in Libya that enables men to monopolise inheritance of property to the exclusion of women, on the pretext that a woman might pass the property on to her husband, meaning the family property would be divided and lost, lowering the social standing of the family.
