WUNRN
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Cases
of domestic violence are heard by |
BEIRUT, 23 September 2009 (IRIN) - As
lawmakers struggle to form a government three months after Lebanon's parliamentary elections,
women's rights activists await the opening of parliament to debate a new bill
on domestic violence.
Ghida
Anani, programme coordinator of KAFA, a Lebanese organization campaigning
against violence and the exploitation of women, estimates that as many as
three-quarters of all Lebanese women have suffered physical abuse at the hands
of husbands or male relatives at some point in their lives.
In
The new
bill proposes to take domestic violence out of the religious courts and into
the civil system and will cut across confessional lines, giving both Muslim and
Christian women equal rights under the law, and, say campaigners, will be a key
step towards equality between men and women.
"The
family courts don't treat men and women equally," said Nadya Khalife, a
researcher on women's rights in the Middle East and
To say violence and
rape is underreported is not correct. It's not reported at all |
Domestic violence
Warda,
a mother of six, said she suffered 20 years of domestic violence.
She
said her husband was a drug addict who beat and sexually abused her throughout
their marriage. Having had no success seeking help at a hospital and with the
police, she went to see the representative of her Shia Muslim religious court.
Warda,
not her real name, said the representative did little to help except to explain
the difficulties of getting a divorce due to her husband's refusal to grant her
one. In the end she sought help at KAFA and today, though still married, she
lives with her parents with no rights to visit her children.
Every
year more than 500 women seek help at women's centres in
Yet the
actual number of domestic violence cases, according to KAFA's Ghida Anani, is
far higher: "To say violence and rape is underreported is not
correct," she said: "It's not reported at all."
Anani
said both hospitals and the police were failing to report domestic violence
cases. "Often doctors don't ask about bruises and if a woman makes a
complaint about domestic violence, the hospital reports it as a `home accident'
and there is no further investigation," she said.
The
police record incidents of violence against women as "beatings" but
do not specify in the report who was the perpetrator: "It's almost as if
as long as there are no incidences, there's no problem," Anani said.
|
KAFA, a women’s rights
organisation, has drafted a new law that would make domestic violence a
criminal offence under a common civil law |
Religious courts
With 18
different religious confessions officially recognized by the state,
"Family
affairs are seen as a very private issue," said Anani. "The woman is
seen as the man's property."
Efforts
to reform the religious courts over the past decade have met resistance from an
establishment reluctant to upset the confessional balance in a country still
recovering from a devastating 15-year civil war which ended in 1990. Religious
courts, say supporters, respect each sect's traditions as well as protecting
them from others. Many fear that one civil law for all would disrupt the
communal balance.
The
differences between religious and civil law and between the laws for Christian
and Muslim women are clear. The minimum age at which a girl can marry is far
lower in all religious courts for girls than boys, and lower for Muslims than
Christians; in some cases Islamic law permits girls as young as nine to marry.
Islamic
religious laws do not prosecute marital rape nor so-called honour killings
while the custody of children in divorce cases is usually awarded to the
father. According to Anani, this means many women choose to stay in abusive
relationships for the sake of their children.
"We
don't want a legal system treating women differently from men and one that
treats Druze, Shia and Christian women differently from each other," said
HRW's Khalife.
Details of the new bill
In
2007, KAFA set up a steering committee comprised of lawyers, judges and
specialists who drafted a new bill on domestic violence, known as the Family
Violence Bill.
The
proposed law, now awaiting discussion in parliament, stipulates specialized
family courts operating under a common-to-all civil law, with cases of domestic
violence ruled on in private hearings that include judges, social workers,
forensic doctors and psychotherapists.
The new
law obliges anyone witnessing domestic violence to report it, opens the way to
legally binding restraining orders, and ensures the perpetrator provides the
plaintiff with alternative accommodation, as well as paying subsistence
allowance and medical expenses.
It also
calls for specialized police units within the Internal Security Forces (ISF) in
each of
"I
wish that law had seen the light of day before I got married 20 years
ago," said Warda. "It would have changed many things for me. I
wouldn't have been imprisoned to a man who disrespects me. I wouldn't have been
imprisoned to a confessional system. I would have lived with dignity."
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