A new bill that stipulates tougher penalties in cases of domestic violence has stirred up major debates around Egypt, amid fears from husbands that if approved into law, the bill will cause them to land in jail.
Amal Salama, a member of the Committee on Media in the House of Deputies (lower chamber of parliament) submitted the bill to the house earlier this month.
She wants to give men who physically assault their wives or beat them a heavy punishment.
Salama has hopes that the bill will be debated by the house during the current parliamentary session.
The bill, she said, aims to protect families from disintegration.
“I do not want to cause problems to men,” Salama said. “I only want to reduce divorces because most of the divorces are caused by domestic violence,” a local newspaper quoted her as saying.
She cited recent studies about intimate partner violence.
One of the studies she cited was conducted by the National Council for Women, the national agency that defends the rights of women.
A staggering 86 per cent of the women surveyed within the study said they were victims of domestic abuse at the hands of their husbands.
Another study by el-Nadim Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence found that 40 per cent of women were victims of domestic violence.
Nevertheless, the list of victims also includes men. According to a study by the Family Court, 66 per cent of the women who file divorce cases at the courts abuse their husbands physically.
The court also referred to 6,000 cases filed by men who complained against physical abuse by their wives.
Growing intimate partner violence makes it necessary for the government to intervene by formulating legislation that curbs this phenomenon, specialists said.
However, some men express fears that the presence of legislation for cases of domestic violence would cause problems to them.
Mohamed Ahmed, a husband and a father of four, said he usually abuses his wife physically, but had never thought that this would land him in jail.
“I sometimes beat my wife when she misbehaves,” Ahmed said.
He added that a law that criminalises intimate partner violence would be problematic in Egypt because it will cause a large number of men to go to jail.
Some women have already taken violence by their husbands to courts, including one from the northern coastal city of Alexandria who filed a complaint at the prosecution against her husband a few months ago after he assaulted her and caused her.
In her lawsuit, the woman said her husband’s assault caused her severe injuries.
The prosecution ordered the arrest of the husband along with a relative who helped him beat his wife.
The prosecution then ordered the jailing of the two for four days pending investigations in the case.
Another wife filed a lawsuit at the court and demanded the arrest and jailing of her husband, accusing him of repeatedly torturing her together with her daughter.
The woman said her husband also prevented her from getting out of the marriage house for months.
Leading psychologist, Gamal Farwiz, advised wives not to tolerate a shred of violence against them by their husbands.
“Wives who accept this behaviour end up being assaulted every now and then,” Farwiz said. “Such a behavior should never be tolerated or it will become a normal occurrence between spouses.”
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