Extreme poverty in Egypt drives some families to sell their daughters into short-term marriages for sex. |
CAIRO, 16 Nov 2006 (IRIN) - Hanadi was a teenager when she was
sold into a short-term marriage by her father. “When I was 14, my father told me
I was to be married to a man from Saudi Arabia,” said Hanadi, who did not want
to use her real name.
“Later on, I discovered that my father and the man
had agreed I would stay with him for a month, until he returned home [to Saudi
Arabia] at the end of the summer. There was never any intention for us to remain
together any longer than his holiday in Egypt.”
Hanadi is now 20 years
old. She lives in a shelter run by Cairo-based NGO the Hope Village Society,
which cares for street children.
“Hanadi did not know at the time, but
when her father agreed for her to spend a month with the Saudi tourist, he was
paid a large sum of money in return in the form of a dowry, which she never had
a share in,” said Yasser Sobhi al-Okeili, who helps run the centre Hanadi lives
in.
“Nor was the marriage officially registered, though she did not know
it at the time. Eventually, after a failed marriage of her own choice, she found
herself living in the streets. Many girls who have suffered a similar fate end
up as street girls,” al-Okeili said.
Although there is no specific law
that bans the sale of girls and women into such temporary marriages, which
amount to prostitution, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child,
to which Egypt is a signatory, forbids the sale of children and bans marriage
under the age of 16, said Mohamed Tag el-Din Labib, Hope Village Society
training and research director.
In addition, Egyptian law bans both
prostitution and the marriage of girls under 16. “Minors in prostitution are
sent to a sort of corrective centre, where conditions are often as bad if not
worse than they are in adult prisons,” said Nihad Abul Qumsan, director of the
Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights. “The man involved is not usually prosecuted,
but rather acts as a witness in a trial.”
However, rights workers say
that because minors often go through at least some of the steps that would make
a marriage seem legitimate make it difficult for any of the involved parties to
be held accountable or be prosecuted. In addition, parents are almost always
either in charge of a transaction of this kind, or at the very least are
involved and have given their consent.
Superficially
legal
When young girls are set up to be sold for sex, the matter is
very often rendered superficially legal as the couple sign a civil marriage
contract and are divorced upon the departure of the male party, or no marriage
contract is signed at all, as was the case for Hanadi.
According to
Qumsan, rules can be circumvented in a number of ways, including falsifying
birth certificates or not registering the marriage at all.
Because of
this, few statistics or studies on the matter exist. The government’s General
Department for Women’s Affairs does not directly target this practice, according
to a ministry official in the women’s department speaking on condition of
anonymity.
Similarly, rights advocates in several civil society
organisations contacted by IRIN said they do not deal with the phenomenon
outside the framework of violence against women.
Local activists agree
that the main reason for early temporary marriages, as well as other forms of
child exploitation such as child labour, is extreme poverty.
“Money is
always the main incentive,” said Malaka al-Kurdi, director of a campaign
combating violence against women at Cairo-based NGO Alliance for Arab Women. An
estimated quarter of Egypt’s approximately 80 million inhabitants live just on
or below US $2 per day, the United Nations-defined poverty line.
al-Kurdi added that the experience of going through a temporary marriage
whose sole purpose was the gratification of the male partner was enough to
affect a girl for life, particularly in a conservative society such as
Egypt.
“The phenomenon is simply inhuman, in that a girl who undergoes
such an experience is bound to lose out on her childhood,” al-Kurdi said.
Hanadi believed it unlikely, despite her young age, that she would ever
become fully reintegrated into society as a respected citizen. “After what I
went through, no one respects me. The man I married after the Saudi left used to
beat me and use me as a sex worker, inviting friends and acquaintances to the
house and forcing me to sleep with them,” said Hanadi.
“It was horrible.
He kept all the money he made from me, of course, and for me it was a living
nightmare,” she added.
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