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Lobbying for a Law Against Family Violence
(And
What It Will Do For Lesbians)
Written by
Nadz |
Features
September 2008 |
After 4 years of servicing women who suffer from
domestic violence, Kafa – Enough Violence and
Exploitation have launched a campaign to pass a new law
that protects women from family violence. Yep, believe
it or not, there is no such law in Lebanon. Women and
girls get beaten up every day by fathers, brothers,
mothers, husbands, and all sorts of relatives, and
there’s nothing in our laws that protects the women or
criminalizes the violators. Based on their experience
providing counseling, assistance, and legal support for
abused women, Kafa’s legal team have drafted a new bill
for protection from family violence and are currently
lobbying to pass it in the Lebanese Parliament. The
great thing about this bill is that it does not only
outline physical violence, which is what people usually
associate with the term “domestic violence,” but it also
criminalizes family sexual violence, which is when a
husband forces his wife to have sex with him or other
people, in addition to incest and child molestation.
Verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and confinement are also
included in the draft law. Kafa has formed a steering
committee made up of different women’s rights
organizations and activists, including some Meem
members, to begin lobbying for this bill. The pressure
team now needs to find a number of parliamentarians who
are willing to back the project and propose it at the
parliamentary meetings for a vote. For the bill to pass,
it needs the majority vote of the parliament.
While the significance of such a law is self-evident,
the organizers predict a lot of resistance from
religious groups, who may believe that domestic matters
must be handled in religious, and not civil, courts.
They also predict objections against this law to rise
from the general male public because of the power it
gives to women. Lebanon’s volatile security environment
may also play a key factor in locking the bill up in the
drawer with the excuse that more important matters are
at stake. Being a family-based law, the new legislation
will not protect women and girls from neighbors,
strangers, or boyfriends, nor will it help domestic
workers. However, the benefit such a law would give
queer women is gigantic. It specifies the protection of
any female from family members up to four times removed.
That means that we would be able to legally protect
lesbians who are beaten up, forced into marriage,
imprisoned at home, harassed or verbally abused by their
families. Of course, this is an argument that will
hardly be used by the organizers for fear that it might
actually work against the campaign, but it is enough for
the lesbian, bisexual, queer, and transgender
communities to mobilize to support the project.
The lobbying strategy is equally – if not more –
important than the end results. Some campaigners may
claim that it doesn’t matter how we get the law to pass
as long as it does. But that’s missing a crucial factor
in the equation: getting women and girls to actually be
informed of the law’s existence and to actually use it.
What traditionally happens is that women’s rights
organizations print and distribute thousands of
brochures about hotline numbers and knowing one’s
rights. But only a tiny percentage of abused women
actually use this information. That’s because fear and
submission are so firmly entrenched in our heads that we
don’t even demand some of the rights we already have. So
how do we, from the beginning of this campaign, make
sure that women of all ages, religions, and social
classes, will feel empowered to stand up for themselves
and seek the protection of the legal system? We give
them the ownership of this campaign. We mx`ake them feel
that they have had a part of bringing this law into
light. And by “they,” I mean all the women in Lebanon:
hundreds of thousands of them. They must be a part of
the advocacy process, not just as an audience, but as
active participants. Picture thousands of women giving
workshops and information sessions, each to her small
circle of neighbors and friends. Picture women
discussing this over their “sob7iyye” (tr. morning
coffee), sharing stories of inspiration and support.
Picture mothers encouraging their daughters to demand
better treatment from their husbands. Picture thousands
of women walking together, lifting banners and raising
their voices, in a march for justice. Now picture the
parliament session where the bill is finally voted in
and thousands of women and men take to the streets to
celebrate the long-awaited triumph of justice. That
would be the true empowerment of women and the real
inspiration that anything is possible.
You can check the
campaign website on
http://protect.kafa.org.lb |
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