WUNRN
BAHRAIN
- ABANDONED WOMEN SEEK LEGAL REDRESS
From
Suad Hamada
28 July 2008
MANAMA - Women abandoned by their husbands in Bahrain broke
their silence and staged two sit-ins earlier this month to highlight the legal
challenges they faced in getting their marriage annulled. Their cases have now
been taken up by the Women’s Union when some of these women approached it last
week, seeking its help in getting their case heard at courts.
“We
received some of the women who took part in two protests at the Ministry of
Justice and Islamic Affairs and Ministry of Social Development and promised
them to look into their matter at the earliest,” President of the Women’s
Union, Mariam Al Ruwai told Khaleej Times yesterday. She said the union would
also raise the demand of implementing a family law to govern such cases at
Shariah courts.
Those
women have been dumped by their husbands long ago who have also stopped
offering them any financial assistance. However, these women failed to get
divorce because of legal complications. They have been protesting for not being
able to get any financial support from the government because all assistance
still go to their husbands because they are officially still married.
One
of these women is Ruqaya who did not know when she got married in 1996 and had
no idea of the legal hassles she had to face for choosing a man she considered
right at the time of marriage.
“Despite
some problems with my in-laws and financial troubles, as I was the sole
breadwinner, we led a decent life in the early years and I also bore three
daughters from him,” Ruqaya told Khaleej Times while highlighting that divorce
was not the first option as she tried different options to bring him back when
he dumped her four years ago for another woman.
“I
wanted him back and asked many relatives to interfere but when all my efforts
went in vain I filed for divorce,” she said. Ruqaya soon realised the ground
realities when people in her own village started treating her as social outcast
for seeking divorce and not waiting for her husband to come back. Then her
problems started to worsen because courts were not willing to give her divorce.
Like other abandoned women, Ruqaya also does not get housing and inflation
allowance because she is officially married. She said protests would continue
to pressure the authorities concerned to look into their plight and give them
justice as some of the women have been deserted years ago.
Activist
Afaf Al Jamri supported those women and called upon them to continue their
protest for their rights. She told Khaleej Times that unnecessary delays of
their legal cases against their husbands who abandoned them and their children
without reasons should be tackled, and a mechanism should be found to implement
the family law. She also demanded a law to protect wives from being victimised
by their husbands. Courts in Bahrain did not grant women divorce if they were
not physically abused by their husbands, so couples living separately gave
courts no reason to order divorce, she said.
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