Father demands 'one million likes' dowry for daughter
A Yemeni young man who sought to marry his sweetheart was shocked when her father demanded “one million likes” on Facebook as a dowry for her.
The father, Salim Ayyash, asked the would-be husband he must write the word “like” one million times over a period of one month in all his tweets and contacts with friends on Facebook. But the father quickly assured the daunted young man, identified as Osama, that he might consider cutting that number before the end of the deadline.
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Ayyash, a well-known Facebook personality in the western Yemeni province of Taizz, also told the suitor that he would be watching his Facebook and Twitter activity to check whether he was making progress.
“Ayyash said he was watching Osama’s online activities as he set off to accomplish that dowry task …he also told him that before the end of the month, he would evaluate his achievement and could reduce the dowry if he is satisfied with his achievement,” the Saud Arabic language daily Sada said in a report from Yemen.
It said the rare request by Ayyash came amidst soaring wedding expenses and dowries (money paid by grooms to their brides under Islamic law) in Yemen.
According to UNICEF, 91% of women in Egypt are victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) - the largest number in a single country in the world.
The image below was shared by CNN in 1996 and caused outrage, and shows a 10-year-old girl being mutilated at a barbershop in Cairo.
Due to this, there are many misconceptions surrounding the legality and religiosity of FGM.
FGM was illegalized in Egypt in 1996 (except in hospitals). However, it was the death of an 11-year-old girl in 2007 that led to the complete ban of FGM in Egypt.
In 1997, Egypt's Al-Azhar Institution, the highest authority in the Sunni Islamic world, stated that female circumcision is "un-Islamic" and has nothing to do with religion. The former Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi, even declared that his own daughter had not undergone the operation.
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In the past two years, Al-Azhar has reiterated that FGM is un-Islamic and should not occur under any circumstances. Nevertheless, Al-Azhar's calls were silenced during Morsi's regime which was dominated by ultra-conservative Islamists.
While more than three-quarters of Egyptian girls are said to have had their genitals mutilated by this illegal act that violates basic human rights, the government (both current and past) continues to ignore the problem and fails to raise awareness.
Prevalence of FGM in Africa. For more detailed maps, see Mackie and UNICEF 2013, p. 26.
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Information about the prevalence of FGM has been collected since 1989 in a series ofDemographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). In 2013 UNICEF published a report based on 70 of these surveys, indicating that FGM is concentrated in 27 African countries, as well as in Yemen and Iraqi Kurdistan, and that 125 million women and girls in those countries have been affected
The practice is mostly found in what political scientist Gerry Mackie describes as an "intriguingly contiguous zone" in Africa, from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east, and from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south, intersecting in Sudan.[72] According to UNICEF, the top rates are in Somalia (with 98 percent of women affected), Guinea (96 percent), Djibouti (93 percent), Egypt (91 percent), Eritrea (89 percent), Mali (89 percent), Sierra Leone (88 percent), Sudan (88 percent), Gambia (76 percent), Burkina Faso (76 percent), Ethiopia (74 percent), Mauritania (69 percent), Liberia (66 percent), and Guinea-Bissau (50 percent).
Around one in five cases is in Egypt. Forty-five million women over the age of 15 who had experienced FGM were living in Egypt, Ethiopia and northern Sudan as of 2008, and nine million were in Nigeria.[74] Most of the women experience Types I and II. Type III is predominant in Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan, and in areas of Eritrea and Ethiopia near those countries. USAID estimated in 2008 that around eight million women in Africa over the age of 15 were living with Type III.
Outside Africa FGM occurs in Yemen (23 percent prevalence), among the Kurds in Iraq (giving the country an overall prevalence rate of eight percent), Indonesia and Malaysia.[76] It has been documented in India, among the Bedouin in Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and by anecdote in Colombia, Oman, Peru and Sri Lanka.[77] There are indications that it is performed in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, although no nationally representative information is available for those countries.[78] There are also immigrant communities that practise it in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, Scandinavia, the United States and Canada.[11]
In 2013 UNICEF reported a downward trend in some countries. In Kenya and Tanzania women aged 45–49 years were three times more likely to have been cut than girls aged 15–19, and the rate among adolescents in Benin, Central African Republic, Iraq, Liberia and Nigeria had dropped by almost half.[79] In 2005 the organization reported that the median age at which FGM was performed had fallen in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Kenya and Mali. Possible explanations include that, in countries clamping down on the practice, it is easier to cut a younger child without being discovered, and that the younger the girls are, the less they can resist.
تم تدشين الحملة العالمية لجمع التوقيعات لكى يتم ارداج منظمة الاخوان المسلمين ضمن منظمات الارهاب الدولية ولمطالبة منظمات المجتمع الدولي، ومناشدة بأصحاب الضمير الشرفاء فى كل مكان، بحظر نشاط الجماعة بكل ما هو متاح من الوسائل، واعتبارها تنظيمًا إرهابيًا، ومصادرة مقراتها وأملاكها وأموالها،
لمطالبة منظمات المجتمع الدولي، ومناشدة ما وصفهم بأصحاب الضمير الشرفاء
فى كل مكان، بحظر نشاط الجماعة بكل ما هو متاح من الوسائل، واعتبارها
تنظيمًا إرهابيًا، ومصادرة مقراتها وأملاكها وأموالها، حسب الصفحة الرسمية
للموقع. - See more at:
http://almogaz.com/news/politics/2013/08/18/1057029#sthash.wmdlIio3.dpuf
UNEDITED aerial footage of Egypt's June 30 protests
[UNEDITED
VERSION] Egypt's Armed Forces has released footage from protests that
it has captured using Military helicopters. The video raises tensions
between President Morsi and the Armed Forces, and shows the extent of
the June 30 protests. Check out the completely UNEDITED footage below:
Violence against women in Egypt gained national and international
attention following a series of well-publicized sexual assaults on women
in the vicinity of Tahrir Square earlier this year during protests
commemorating the second anniversary of the “25 January Revolution”.
Unfortunately, these instances of violence against women were neither isolated nor unique.
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Whether in the public or private spheres, at the hands of state or
non-state actors, violence against women in Egypt continues to go mostly
unpunished.
Most cases go unreported for a plethora of reasons that stem from
discriminatory gender stereotypes, the lack of women’s awareness of
their rights, social and family pressures to remain silent,
discriminatory legislation and women’s economic dependence. Even when
women do surmount these obstacles and turn to state institutions for
protection, justice and reparation, they are often confronted with
dismissive or abusive officials who fail to refer cases to prosecution
or trial, and lengthy and expensive court proceedings if they want to
get divorced. Women who do manage to obtain a divorce then face the
likelihood that court orders for child support or spousal maintenance
will not be enforced.
In recent weeks during an Amnesty International mission to Egypt, I
met several women and girls who were assaulted by their husbands and
other relatives. Many suffer in silence for years while they are
subjected to beatings, severe physical and verbal abuse and rape.
Om Ahmed (mother of Ahmed) told me that her husband began drinking
and beating her after three years of marriage. She recounted daily
abuse, punctuated with particularly vicious attacks. In one instance,
her ex-husband smashed a full glass bottle on her face, leaving her
without her front teeth. She stayed with him for another 17 years,
partially, she explained, because she had nowhere else to go, and
partially because she did not want to bring “shame” on her family. She
never considered approaching the police, shrugging:
“The police don’t care, they don’t think it is a problem if a husband
beats his wife. If you are a poor woman, they treat you like you don’t
even exist and send you back home to him after hurling a few insults.”
Eventually, Om Ahmed’s husband kicked her out of their home, and for
the next year she lived with her three children in an unfinished
building in an informal settlement without running water and
electricity. After two years in family court, she was awarded a meagre
150 Egyptian pounds (approx. US$21) per month for her daughter’s child
support (her other two children don’t qualify for it as they over 18).
Her own spousal maintenance decision is still pending.
Unlike Egyptian Muslim men who can divorce their wives unilaterally –
and without giving any reason – women who wish to divorce their abusive
husbands have to go to court and prove “fault” or that their marriage
caused them “harm”. To prove physical harm, they have to present
evidence, such as medical reports or eyewitness testimony, in
proceedings that are drawn out and expensive. Many women’s rights
lawyers and lawyers working in family court cases told me that this is a
very difficult task for many women because they don’t always report the
abuse to the police, and neighbours, who are usually the only witnesses
other than household members, are reluctant to get involved.
I met one woman who had a particularly striking case. She told me:
“We [my ex-husband and I] only lived together for a few months, but
it took me six years to get a divorce, and I am still in court to get my
full [financial] rights back. Problems started soon after we got
married, and he would beat me. His mother and sisters were also abusive…
After a particularly bad beating, I went to the police station to lodge
a complaint, but I withdrew it under pressure [from my husband who
threatened me]. The case took so long because he had good lawyers who
knew all the loopholes in the law.”
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In 2000, a second option for women seeking divorce was introduced,
whereby women can obtain khul’ (no-fault divorce) from the courts
without having to prove harm, but only if they forego their right to
spousal maintenance and other financial rights. These court proceedings
can still take up to a year and put women who are financially dependent
on their husbands at a severe disadvantage. Despite this, several
divorcees told Amnesty International that they opted for khul’ after
waiting for a court fault-based divorce for years.
Twenty-four-year-old Om Mohamed (mother of Mohamed) told Amnesty International:
“We have been separated for over four years, but I am still neither
married nor divorced… I was trying to prove all this time in court that
he didn’t spend any money on me or our son, and that [my husband] used
to beat me with whatever he could find under his hands, including belts
and wires. Every time I go to court, the hearing is postponed, and I
need this or that paper. I spent a lot of money on lawyers, and got
nowhere… Eventually, I gave up and in January [2013] I raised a khul’
case.”
During my visit to Egypt in May and June this year, I also met women
and girls who suffered violence and sexual abuse at the hands of other
relatives. A 17-year-old girl told me that she ran away from home after a
particularly brutal beating by her brother, who stabbed her in the nose
with a kitchen knife, and burned her with a hot iron. Her scars
corroborated her story. She was too scared to report the incident at the
hospital where she sought treatment, as her brother had accompanied her
and threatened to kill her if she spoke out. She spent months wandering
the streets before being admitted into a private shelter for children.
Another woman who fled home after her brother sexually assaulted her
found temporary protection in a shelter run by an association under the
Ministry of Insurances and Social Affairs. She fled from the shelter
after the administration insisted that she give them her brother’s
contact details, to try to set up a “reconciliation meeting”.
There are only nine official shelters across Egypt, which are
severely under-resourced and in need of capacity-building and training.
Most survivors of domestic violence don’t even know they exist. The idea
of shelters is not widely accepted, because of the stigma attached for
women living outside their family or marital homes.
A staff member at a shelter recounted to me how, after an
awareness-raising session in a village in Upper Egypt, a village leader
got up and – in front of all those gathered – threatened to “stab to
death” any woman who dared to leave an abusive household and run to a
shelter. In another instance, the husband of a woman living in a shelter
threatened to set it on fire.
In May, the authorities announced the establishment of a special
female police unit to combat sexual violence and harassment. While this
may be a welcome step, the Egyptian authorities need to do much more to
prevent and punish gender-based violence and harassment, starting by
unequivocally condemning it. They also need to amend legislation to
ensure that survivors receive effective remedies. They must also show
political will and tackle the culture of denial, inaction and, in some
cases complicity, of law enforcement officials who not only fail to
protect women from violence but also to investigate properly all
allegations and bring perpetrators to trial.
Egyptian women were at the forefront of the popular protests that
brought down Hosni Mubarak’s presidency some two and a half years ago.
Today, they continue to challenge the prevailing social attitudes and
gender biases that facilitate violence against women, in all its forms,
to continue with impunity – while they continue their fight against
marginalization and exclusion from the political processes shaping the
country’s future.
Meanwhile, with the help of human and women’s rights organizations,
seven women who were sexually assaulted around Tahrir Square lodged a
complaint with the prosecution in March 2013 calling for accountability
and redress. Investigations were started, but have since stalled.
One of the lawyers for the women was told by a prosecutor that the
case was not that “important” compared to other cases on his desk. But
the plaintiffs are not giving up. As one of them told Amnesty
International: “Even as I was being abused, I felt that I will not stay
quiet, I will not back down. They have to be punished.”
By Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Egypt researcher
