‘Marry-Your-Rapist’ Law Repealed> Palestine:

[Olajire Deborah]

[10:55 AM, 5/11/2018]
Palestine: ‘Marry-Your-Rapist’ Law Repealed

Revoke Other Discriminatory Laws Against Women

Photo showing a white dress symbolizing a bride produced by the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling as part of their campaign to repeal article 308 which had allowed rapists to escape prosecution if they married their victims. The message in Arab
Expand

Photo showing a white dress symbolizing a bride produced by the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling as part of their campaign to repeal article 308 which had allowed rapists to escape prosecution if they married their victims. The message in Arabic on the sign reads: “No to marrying the victim to the rapist.” © 2018 Human Rights Watch/Anan Abu Shanab
(Jerusalem) – The Palestinian Authority’s repeal of certain discriminatory provisions against women in March 2018 is a good first step toward what should be the repeal of a series of such measures, Human Rights Watch said today. Other forms of discrimination include birth registration, personal status laws, and gaps in accountability for domestic violence. Palestine should make such reforms ahead of the first review of its record on women’s rights before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women – the body that monitors the international women’s rights treaty – in Geneva in July.

On March 14, 2018, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, signed Law no. 5 of 2018, which repealed article 308 of the 1960 Penal Code enforced in the West Bank. Based on an assessment by the head of a women’s shelter, the law had allowed alleged rapists to escape prosecution and could allow convicted rapists to avoid imprisonment if they married their victims. The new law also amended article 99 to prohibit judges from reducing sentences for serious crimes, such as the murder of women and children.

“The Palestinian Authority has finally closed disturbing colonial-era and other loopholes that could allow rapists to escape punishment if they married their victims, and to treat murders of women as a lesser crime than murders of men,” said Rothna Begum, Middle East women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Other countries in the region that still have provisions that could allow rapists to go free by marrying victims, including Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Syria, also should repeal them.”

Human Rights Watch in April discussed the status of women with members of the Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the Public Prosecution Office. Human Rights Watch also met with 18 representatives of various women’s rights groups, human rights organizations, and international organizations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Systematic abuses associated with Israel’s 50-year occupation including institutionalized discrimination, home demolitions and restrictions on movement fundamentally undermine the rights of Palestinian women in the West Bank and Gaza. Human Rights Watch has documented the impact of these practices in a submission for Israel’s review of its record under the UN Convention on…

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/10/palestine-marry-your-rapist-law-repealed

[Author]

Posts