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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Living Features Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A marriage of convenience
By Mariz TadrosLast week, Minister of Justice Farouk Seif El-Nasr announced that new restrictions will be placed on marriages between foreign men and Egyptian women: the man must be present himself for the signing of the marriage contract, and must produce documents from his embassy stipulating that there are no objections to his marriage, as well as a description of his socio-economic status and sources of income. All documents must be approved by the Egyptian authorities. If the age difference is more than 25 years, the husband will have to buy bonds worth LE25,000 for his wife, and the marriage must be submitted to the Ministry of Justice for approval. The woman will only be allowed to cash the bonds after five years of marriage, or in case of divorce or her husband's death. The official registration of all marriages between foreign men and Egyptian women will only be permitted at two principle government offices, one in Cairo and one in Alexandria. The purpose of these restrictions, according to Seif El-Nasr, is to protect Egyptian women's rights and guarantee that they and their children have a dignified life. The minister revealed that the past year has witnessed 1,510 marriages of Egyptian women to foreign men, in 150 of which the age difference exceeded 25 years. According to the ministry's statistics, almost 400 women married Saudi men, 370 Palestinians, 179 Sudanese, 81 Americans, 76 Jordanian and 59 Austrians. A total estimate is impossible, however, since many are unofficial Urfi marriages.
Some activists and lawyers are questioning the efficacy of the restrictions, however. Tahani El-Gebali, a lawyer, believes that the move will not have the impact the minister seeks. While she supports the idea of obliging the man to be present in person if he wishes to marry ("because often, a man just sends a representative to do the job for him"), El-Gebali remains highly sceptical that legal measures can deter the "sale of Egyptian women to Arab men under the label of marriage". She describes the proposal, furthermore, as a violation of human rights, "since it does not respect people's right to privacy and the right to conduct their own affairs as they see fit, for example by fixing the brideprice at LE25,000". She argues that, although "it is not uncommon for minors to be married off to men from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia", it would be unjust to impose general restrictions on all cases of marriage between Egyptian women and foreign men. "We should consider legal intervention when all other measures fail. If young Egyptian women are forced to marry foreign men due to dire poverty, we have to look at the social and economic issues at hand. Legal measures are the easiest way for the government to deal with the problem." El-Gebali also fears that the LE25,000 stipulation could lead to the catastrophic proliferation of Urfi marriages, by men seeking to avoid the legal obligations that an officially registered marriage would entail.
Somayya Ibrahim, a women's rights activist, believes the proposed restrictions "basically reduces marriage to a financial transaction and women to commodities. Protecting a woman's rights and those of her children should not entail estimating how much she is worth, and translating that into bonds." Ibrahim also argues that there are a thousand and one ways in which men can avoid paying the sum, "like making the woman renounce her right to the money in exchange for divorcing her".
Ibrahim believes that, if the government is serious about protecting the rights of women, legislators should insist, for instance, that the woman retain the right to divorce herself without renouncing her financial rights. "At the end of the day," she emphasises, "all these restrictions are basically ways in which the government is trying to silence the demands for a change in the nationality law, which denies women their basic citizenship rights." Under the current law, Egyptian women who marry foreign men are not entitled to give their nationality to their children, and are consequently denied services such as free education and health care. Many feminists, human rights advocates and lawyers have long been lobbying for a change to the law, which violates the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a convention Egypt has signed.
Ibrahim, like El-Gebali, believes the root of the problem is essentially economic: "When a family is living in dire need, and the opportunity for improvement arises through a proposal from a wealthy older man, a young girl is the first to be sacrificed -- and not just in Egypt."
