Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi says he will submit a bill to parliament granting women and men equal inheritance rights, in line with a proposal put forward by a government-backed committee.
A report by the Individual Freedoms and Equality Committee (COLIBE) released in June sought to address a number of issues related to individual freedoms and gender equality, but drew the ire of the country's conservative forces.
In a televised address marking Women's Day in Tunisia on Monday, Essebsi, 91, described the inheritance equality measure as long overdue.
"I propose that equality in matters pertaining to inheritance be signed into law by modifying the code of personal status," he said, referring to a series of laws initiated post-independence in the mid-1950s that revolutionised women's rights, most markedly through abolishing polygamy and legalising abortion.
"This should have been done in 1956 but the constitution did not provide for it then," Essebsi, of Tunisia's secular Nidaa Tounes party, said.
The president's proposal, however, stopped short of demanding an equal share for all women, with the president insisting that families wishing to continue observing the existing laws surrounding inheritance may continue doing so.
Currently, the inheritance law - which derives from Islam's sacred text, the Quran - restricts women to half of what men are entitled to.
Demonstration right now in downtown Tunisa celebrates national women's day, a commemoration of the passage of the Code of Personal Status of 1956 guaranteeing key women's rights. Fight over personal liberties vs Islamic principles/identity is heating up after #COLIBE report pic.twitter.com/qbNDPfYQxk
— Fadil Aliriza (@FadilAliriza) 13 August 2018
COLIBE, set up by the president in August 2017, was mandated with the task of harmonising the country's laws with a constitution that was passed four years ago.
The 2014 constitution places a strong emphasis on the rights and dignity of individuals, elements long neglected during the rule of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in the aftermath of mass protests in 2011 that quickly spread to other countries throughout the region.
The committee's inheritance equality proposal has stirred heated debate in the Muslim-majority country, along with a separate recommendation for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
The COLIBE report also called for the freedom of conscience, the abolition of capital punishment, the right to take the mother's last name as well as the right of Tunisian women to pass on citizenship to their foreign husbands.