WUNRN
SAUDI ARABIA - DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LAW IS A STEP TO CHANGING
ATTITUDES |
By
Nesrine Malik - August 31, 2013 |
Earlier this year, a powerful image was circulated in
This kicked off ‘No More Abuse’, a campaign to highlight and tackle
domestic violence in the country. There was some scepticism about the drive,
backed by an official charity, but it seems that it has paid off, culminating
in an historic move last week as
The legislation makes sexual violence in the home and the workplace a
punishable crime. Moreover, it provides for shelter for victims of abuse and
places the onus on law enforcement agencies to follow up on reports of abuse.
It is backed up by a jail sentence and hefty fines.
While this is an encouraging move, there are too many ways in which it can
be thwarted. Such legislation is only fruitful if backed up by the right
attitudes.
The
law does not exist in a vacuum: The problem in this instance is that it is a
forward step in a country where male guardianship is not only deep rooted in
culture, but enshrined in the law.
The implementation of the law is quite obviously hamstrung by the fact that
the ability to report incidents of domestic or sexual abuse is severely
limited.
Emotional challenges
There are overwhelming emotional challenges in the act of defying family
and the unfamiliarity of calling the law into the home in a society where the
private realm is sacrosanct.
Ironically, it is probably expatriate women who will reap more benefit from
the law, as they are less constrained by culture and extended family pressures.
Then there are the farcical practical limitations of say, actually
reporting a father or husband (who make up 90 per cent of abusers in the
kingdom) to the police, when they are your guardian and would probably need to
drive you there.
There is a fundamental contradiction between trying to protect women, while
also entrusting their fates unconditionally and entirely to their male
guardians.
Practical implications
However, in general, these difficulties are not peculiar to Saudi society
or even conservative cultures. It is challenging to report abuse for similar
reasons anywhere in the world. Emotional confusion, fear of reprisal, or social
ostracism and the difficulty of producing proof can all conspire to sweep the
problem under the carpet.
In a way, the cases that are visible or reported even in the West are also,
in their own way, ‘the tip of the iceberg’.
Perhaps we shouldn’t fixate on the immediate practical implications of this
new law. The hope should be that it will begin to change attitudes. Sometimes
the value of a law is in allowing victims to recognise, acknowledge and
challenge abusive behaviour.
The King Khalid Foundation document that resulted in the new legislation
goes into great detail about the unacknowledged levels of domestic and sexual
abuse in the country, but goes further in classifying intimidation and
emotional torment as abuse, and even outlines protection from abuse as integral
to human and citizens’ rights.
The issue is not whether victims of abuse will seek redress in a court of
law, but that they are furnished with the tools and legal framework to
recognise and identify all forms of abuse for what they really are. In a
culture where so much is falsely justified by religion and custom, where so
much self-repression masquerades as honour, such strong language is vital and
welcome.