This most recent incident confirms the fears of numerous women’s groups and rights organizations about the continued risk to the lives and health of girls, the inadequacy of the protection provided by the law, and the short-sightedness of a statutory philosophy based on stricter penalties while disregarding the social tolerance of female circumcision.
Files: Women's and girls' rights
The two thus renew their call for the Egyptian parliament to amend the law in order to guarantee women’s access to safe abortion in cases where pregnancy constitutes a threat to the woman’s life or health, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
To mark International Women’s Day, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights is publishing scenes from the lives of trans women as part of a series titled “They’re Women Too.” The stories’ aim is to spotlight the hardship experienced by trans women in Egypt.
The undersigned organizations welcome the most recent amendments to the Penal Code to include a precise definition of the crime of female genital cutting (FGC) and extend the the statute of limitation to ten years. The organizations nevertheless stress that enforcement mechanisms remain lacking and that the amended provisions still allows doctors and medical institutions to evade punishment.
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the global alliance Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice (RESURJ) are again calling on the Egyptian legislator to amend legal provisions on abortion to guarantee women’s access to safe abortion in cases where pregnancy constitutes a threat to the woman’s life or health or if the pregnancy is the result of rape.
The EIPR urges prosecutors to charge the doctor with causing lethal injury rather than the usual charge of accidental homicide.
The anniversary of Black Wednesday, when in May 2005 several female demonstrators and journalists were sexually assaulted by demonstrators in support of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, comes this year as freedom of opinion, expression, and peaceful assembly have been seriously eroded.
The EIPR is concerned that the decree ignores the reality of the so called seasonal, summer marriages in Egypt, a phenomenon that has increased over the last decade.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights welcomes the release of the National Strategy to Combat Violence against women, a demand long voiced by numerous rights and feminist organizations and grassroots initiatives against all forms of sexual violence and exploitation.
In an end-of-year statement, EIPR lamented that despite its shortcomings, the new constitution had established important new protections for citizens against oppression and injustice.
