As Lebanon marked International Women’s Day Thursday, a prominent human rights organization expressed hope that the country would implement further reforms to bolster gender equality.
Human Rights Watch said in a statement that in spite of the advances made by Lebanon on this issue, more should be done.
“Despite some recent reforms, Lebanon’s laws still explicitly permit violence and discrimination against women,” Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, noted.
The positive steps taken in recent years have not stopped the country from lagging behind other countries in the region in terms of policies to promote women’s rights, the statement continued.
The organization specifically criticized the 2014 domestic violence law, also known as Law 293, which, it said, included a narrow definition of domestic violence and didn’t criminalize marital rape.
Although Penal Code Article 522 – which allowed rapists to escape prosecution by marrying their victims – was abolished, a loophole in the legislation was left for cases concerning sex with children ages 15-17 and for cases in which a virgin girl is bribed into having sex with the promise of subsequent marriage.
With the May 6 parliamentary elections inching closer, Fakih said that candidates running for office should commit to pursuing actionable goals that could contribute to improving women’s rights in Lebanon.
“Parliamentary candidates should show they are serious about women’s rights by promising to take serious and specific steps to fix laws that are failing women,” she said.
The press release went on to identify these steps as follows: abolishing inequality under personal status laws and granting citizenship to children of Lebanese mothers; abolishing child marriage; banning all forms of domestic violence including marital rape; ending human trafficking and protecting the rights of migrant domestic workers.
Meanwhile, in a nod to International Women's Day, the Internal Security Forces and General Security Thursday saluted the directorates’ female officers on their respective websites.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
