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The Global Persecution of Women
Glossary
Human Rights
UDHR.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 5, CEDAW
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures:
(a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.
Afghanistan
Gawhar Nikpai, “Afghanistan: See You in Court,” Institute for war & Peace Reporting, 1 Dec. 2005.
Women are beginning to break their code of silence and stand up for their rights.
Khurshid is only 15, and the pretty young girl does not look like a rebel. But she has taken the unprecedented step of refusing to marry the man her parents picked out for her.
Instead, she has run away from her native Baghlan province with her boyfriend, Elias, 20, in the hopes of finding a solution in a family court.
“I was only six months old when my father betrothed me to one of his relatives,” she said, timidly. “I was supposed to marry him right about now. But I didn't like him. I ran away with the boy I loved.”
Elias explained that he had heard on the radio that the family court in Kabul can help in these kinds of situations, so the couple have come to the capital to try and marry without their parents’ consent.
The case is ongoing, and there is no way of knowing what will happen. Khurshid could be forced back to her father’s house, or even jailed for running away. While this measure would not be legal, jails all over the country are full of young girls whose only crime is trying to escape unwanted marriages.
“Some judges make a decision to put a girl in prison, even though this is against the constitution,” said a lawyer in the Kabul Family Court, who did not want to be named. “But under the law, there is no punishment for running away, if the purpose of the escape is marriage. They should be married by the court.”
So, if Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy triumphs, Khurshid may be allowed to marry Elias.
In this traditional society, it is almost unheard of for women to turn to the courts to defend their rights. Most often, women are subjected to the rule of fathers, husbands, brothers or even sons, with little chance of exerting their own will. But that is starting to change, say experts.
Sima, a slender woman in her late twenties, was only 13 when she got married. After living with her for just one month, her husband left for Russia. Fourteen years later, he still has not come back to her. Like Khurshid, Sima is a native of Baghlan, a province in northern Afghanistan.
According to local tradition, Sima had to live with her husband’s family, who, she says, were hostile and abusive to her. With the support of family and friends, she went to the family court in Kabul and secured a divorce.
Dressed in black traditional clothing, and with her blue burqa thrown up to reveal her face, Sima looked very happy at the outcome.
“Women with family problems should just ignore these abominable traditions. They must not feel ashamed to turn to the courts,” she said defiantly.
Her now ex-husband, Khodai Nazar, who attended the proceedings, was less enthusiastic.
“It is against our culture and tradition for people to get divorced,” he grumbled. “It casts shame on me and my family.”
But Sima was able to take advantage of the law, which sets out certain conditions for a wife to divorce her husband. If the husband has been away for more than four years, as in Sima’s case, she can apply for an official divorce. Also, if the husband is unable to support his wife, if he is violent, or is disabled in some way, the wife can apply for a legal separation. But up until now, very few women have had the courage.
“We have to endure every kind of violence and tyranny without complaining,” said Sima. “We must not keep quiet any more. We have to stand up for our rights.”
One judge from the family court, who spoke in condition of anonymity, agreed that women in Afghanistan have been victimised by traditions, many of which go against the spirit and letter of Islam.
With the relative freedom that came after the fall of the Taleban, things are starting to shift, said the judge, and women are now becoming more aware of their rights. But Afghans are not ready for drastic change.
“Democracy is new for us and we are just starting out. It should not be misused,” he said.
Huma Sultani, head of women’s development section at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, stresses that women’s problems stemmed from social structures.
“Women were economically dependent on men, they had to put up with anything, otherwise they and their children would go hungry,” she said. “So violence became part of the tradition in our society, and there were no government bodies to defend women.”
But increasingly human rights institutions and the media have stepped in to make women aware of their rights. “Now women are starting to dare to stand up and defend themselves,” said Sultani.
These gains have been largely limited to large cities, she emphasised. In the provinces, the situation has changed little.
Fauzia Amini, head of the legal department at the ministry of women's affairs, says that since the fall of the Taleban her office has handled more than 1,500 cases. Only a small number resulted in divorce, while most women sought and received advice and mediation and were then able to carry on with their lives.
Najiba is a young widow with two children. Her husband was killed in an earthquake in Iran, and now her brother-in-law is trying to kick her out of the family home, leaving her children and property behind.
She has come to the ministry of women’s affairs on the advice of her neighbours to try and find a solution.
"I am sure that our voice will be heard now and that no one will be able to violate our rights," she said.
Men also come to the ministry of women’s affairs, seeking help for what they see as the excesses of the new democracy.
Rahmatullah, 40, is a shopkeeper in Kabul. Leaning against a wall in the ministry, he looks bewildered about the turn his life has taken.
“My wife demanded that I buy her a SIM card for her mobile phone,” he said. “I told her I didn't have money right now, and would get her one when I could. Now she's living at her mother’s house and asking for a divorce.”
Halima Kazem, “Afghans Decry Violence Against Women. After recent slayings, female protesters in Kabul call on Karzai's government to protect their safety and their constitutional rights,” LA Times, 6 May 2005.
"There needs to be a proper system to record marriages and divorces in Afghanistan, where women have proof of such events. Then they can protect themselves," said Orzala Ashraf, director of a nongovernmental group called Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan.
”Divorce – Afghan Style,” Institute for war & peade reporting, 27 Aug. 2004.
Although the numbers are still small, women are increasingly turning to the courts to end their marriages.
By Suhaila Muhseni and Shahabuddin Tarakhil in Kabul (ARR No. 131, 27-Aug-04)
Since the fall of the Taleban, more and more women have been reclaiming the legal right to initiate divorce that they always had but were too afraid to exercise under the mujahedin and Taleban regimes.
According to Aziza Adalat Khwa Kohistani, an attorney who works for Medica Mondiale, an international women’s organisation operating in Kabul, women have always been able to seek a civil divorce on the following grounds; if her husband cannot financially support her; disappears for a set period of time; harms her without cause; or is weak.
Kohistani said that “harm” covers inhumane treatment while “weak” can apply to men who are impotent, insane, or have a serious disease that cannot be cured or treated.
Women now have an additional option that was not available under the Taleban. Hamida, the president of the family court in Kabul, which handles divorce cases in the capital, said a woman will also be granted a divorce if her husband agrees to end their marriage and she consents to pay him an agreed amount of money.
Interpretation of the nation’s divorce laws often depend on attitudes of the regime in power. According to Ali Mateen, a family court judge, a husband needed to be missing for 90 years before a woman could be granted a divorce under the Taleban regime. But under the current regime, that period has been reduced to three years. This difference is because the Taleban follow the Hanafi branch of Islam, and the current administration adheres to the Shafee variant.
“During the Taleban regime, divorce was [to] the advantage of men only,” Mateen said. “Women could not even go out of their houses easily. After the interim government of [President Hamed] Karzai, they could once again appear in civil society.”
A look at the experience of one woman who sought a divorce while the Taleban were in power makes it clear why few women were willing to face that ordeal.
Mastoora (not her real name), a 35-year-old schoolteacher, had been married for five years when, in March 2000, she started divorce proceedings in the family court in Kabul. She said she sought the separation because her husband and his family beat her.
“I did not want to leave my husband because I understood that it would have a bad effect on my children, but they drove me to divorce,” she said.
Mastoora said that the abuse started after she discovered an incestuous relationship within in her husband’s family. But in court, she refused to give the judge the exact reason for the beating, fearing she would be further persecuted if she disclosed the family’s secret.
In the end, the judge granted her a divorce but, in a highly unusual move, gave custody of the children to her husband. She hasn’t seen them since because their father threatened to harm her if she dared to do so.
Circumstances today are very different.
Last November, after four years of marriage, a 20-year-old Kabul woman decided to seek a divorce from her husband whom, she said, was beating her. The young woman also said that her in-laws beat her.
After escaping with her 10-month-old son, she applied to family court for a divorce, with the help of Medica Mondiale. On January 1, her divorce was granted and she and her son now live with her parents.
Although the numbers are still tiny when compared to the West, it appears that more women are turning to the courts and seeking separations.
According to Mateen, the family court in Kabul, which was founded on March 21, 2003, granted divorces to 39
women during the first seven months of this year, compared to 22 for nine months in 2003.
Outside the capital, women can also file for a divorce in district courts, but there was no available data on how many were granted.
Mateen believes that many women are now seeking divorces because a number of them are recently returned refugees who were exposed to foreign cultures. He said that they “learned [that women] can stand up for their rights” while they were abroad, and these “rights” were reinforced when they got back home.
“Since the collapse of the Taleban and establishment of the transitional government, the ministry of women, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and propaganda through media and teachers in the schools, women learned about their rights,” he added.
“There are many reasons for the increase in divorce cases, but the basic reason now is that the freedom of women is such that they can no longer tolerate cruelties being done to them,” said Khohistani.
Before granting a divorce, Mateen said, the court usually attempts to have the couple reconcile. Only if that fails is a separation is granted.
In addition, the court has the authority to block marriages. Mateen said 17 potential unions have been stopped so far this year.
While a small number of men have referred to family court to resolve family disputes, no men have thus far sought divorces through the court, according to Mateen.
He said men could initiate divorce proceedings against their wives in family or district court if she’s a prostitute; not good in domestic affairs; unable to provide for her husband’s sexual needs; or treats her husband and other family members unfairly.
Most men prefer, however, to obtain divorces without going through the court system, which is their right according to civil law, Mateen said.
Payenda Mohammed, an official with Kabul’s city government, explained that a man could divorce his wife under Islamic law, in the following ways: by simply declaring to her, without becoming angry, that she is no longer his wife and that they are divorced; angrily telling his wife that she is divorced; or telling her three times that they are divorced.
If he later wants to take her back as his wife, he could do so without having to remarry her in the first case; would have to remarry her in the second; and could not have her back as a wife in the third (she is free to marry someone else after three months, but until she remarries, he will be responsible for her living costs).
Kohistani concludes that Afghanistan still has further to go in fully implementing civil law, and women are still learning about their rights.
“The difference between the capital and the provinces is that [in the latter] we have warlords, people are using weapons, and women still do not know their rights and they feel they cannot say anything against their husbands,” Kohistani said.
In an effort to mitigate this, the ministry of women has formally requested to the government that the family court be established in all the provinces, said Hamida, president of the family court. This would take family cases out of the district courts to a more private setting.
“Because the family cases are secret issues … it’s better for the investigation of family cases to be in the family court,” said Hamida.
Algeria
“Out of the shadows, into the world,” The Economist, 17 June 2004.
Algeria's 1984 family statutes give men an automatic right to divorce, with no legal obligation to their former spouse. In all but a few Arab countries, citizenship may only be passed on by the father of a child, not its mother. Similarly, custody of children customarily goes to the father, a fact that comes into tragic prominence every year in consulates across the region, when the foreign divorcees of Arab men discover that they may lose their children.
Bahrain
”Bahrain: Women battle for their rights,” Women in the Middle East, No. 45, Nov.-Dec. 2006.
Bahraini women are battling a male-dominated society and powerful Islamists in their quest for reforms that would shift jurisdiction over family and women's affairs from Islamic to civil courts.
In the absence of a personal status law in Bahrain, Sharia (Islamic law), in both its Sunni and Shiite interpretations, is the only arbiter when it comes to marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. But after years of struggle, Bahraini women have finally found an influential supporter. The first lady of the Muslim island kingdom, Sheikha Sabika al-Khalifa, who chairs the supreme women's council, has sponsored a bill for a personal status law that would still be based on the Sharia.
It faces fierce resistance from the religious establishment, particularly among Shiite clerics, who have recently brought thousands of people on to the streets to protest against the proposed law. Bahrain is a tiny archipelago of 35 islands off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. It has a population of 650,000, the majority of whom are Shiite Muslims. "The clerics are opposed to the law because it limits their powers. They would be overridden by legislation and would no longer be able to issue verdicts according to their whims."
"The situation of many Bahraini women is tragic. Each neighbourhood has an average of four women that were thrown on the street by their husbands after, say, 30 years of marriage just because they wanted to have younger wives." A man is allowed four wives according to Sharia.
A government fund was created recently to help women awaiting Islamic court decisions on alimony, according to another activist Mariam al-Ruwei, who is in favour of the family law. And according to an amendment to property laws, couples also have the option to jointly own their matrimonial house, which according to Bahraini tradition must be in the man's name.
”Bahrain Files Charges to Silence Women's Activist,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 3 June 2005
Ghada Jamsheer, the head of the Women's Petition Committee (WPC) in Bahrain, faces three trials for slander this month as a result of her involvement in family law cases and her criticisms of Bahrain's sharia judges. There are two sharia systems in Bahrain, one for Sunni Muslims and one for Shia Muslims, and both courts hear family law cases such as divorce, custody and inheritance and make decisions according to interpretations of Islamic law. There are no codified family laws.
Human Rights Watch reports in its statement that the WPC has documented many cases in which judges ruled capriciously, as when women are denied custody of their children because they either work or attend school. In 2003, the WPC collected 1700 signatures in favor of codifying family law, and while the Bahraini government has promised to codify law granting divorced women custody of their children, no action has been taken.
The cases against Jamsheer come from the former husband of a woman championed by the WPC and from several judges, claiming she committed libel by referring to the sharia judges as "corrupt, biased and unqualified," and calling one particular judge "rude and unfair," reports Agence France Presse. Her first case begins tomorrow, with others later this month. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison, but Jamsheer tells the Gulf Daily News "I'm prepared to go to jail if I have to in order to fight for the rights of women."
Human Rights Watch has demanded that Bahrain drop these charges, and eliminate its criminal penalties for slander that does not involve a call to violence. LaShawn R. Jefferson, Women's Rights Director at Human Rights Watch, states that "Ghada Jamsheer is being punished for exposing the injustice that women face in the courtroom. These laws are a blatant attempt to silence her and undermine the reform efforts she spearheads." The Arab Programme for Human Rights Activists has also demanded the retraction of the charges against Jamsheer.
India
British Home Office, “India,” Country of Origin Information Report, 2006.
The BBC, in a news item dated 4 August 2004, reported that following several cases where Indian men had divorced their wives by mail, over the phone and via text messages, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board had taken the matter up at a recent meeting. Although the board did not have the authority to ban the practice there was a consensus among the board that it was a sin and should be discouraged. An awareness campaign was started. ...
At year’s end, there were no changes to the triple talaq provisions, which allowed Muslim men to divorce their wives simply by saying ‘talaq’ three times.
Geeta Pandev, “Muslim women fight instant divorce,” BBC News, 4 Aug. 2004.
For more than a decade Muslim women activists in India have been demanding a ban on what is known as "triple talaq" or instant divorce.
It is a system wherein a Muslim man can divorce his wife in a matter of minutes.
The issue has been highlighted recently after several Indian Muslims have taken to divorcing their wives by mail, over the phone and even through mobile phone text messages.
The practice of instant divorce is banned in several Islamic countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.
But it continues in India.
'Life ruined'
Jahanara's house lies off a narrow lane in Old Delhi.
Narrow steps, barely a foot wide, take you up to the first floor where she sits huddled in a corner of her tiny two-room home, mourning.
Jahanara's parents got her married when she was 15.
Now, two years later, she is back with them because her husband has divorced her.
Saying that he was setting her free he repeated the words "Talaq" (divorce) three times and left.
"My life's ruined. What can I do with myself now? I had hoped to spend the rest of my life with him and look what he did to me," she says.
"I gave up everything to go with him - I thought we'd be together through thick and thin, but he clearly had other ideas."
Jahanara is a victim of what is known as the triple talaq, where a husband exercises his right to divorce his wife within a matter of minutes.
Islamic scholars say the Koran clearly spells out how to issue a divorce.
It has to be spread over three months which allows a couple time for reconciliation.
But today, many men use the post, the telephone or even the short messaging service (sms) to divorce their wives.
Instant divorce
Rehana does not answer her mobile phone when her husband, Akram, calls.
She has been married for 20 years and has four grown up children.
In January this year, Akram threw her out of their house and got married again a month later.
Rehana now lives in constant fear.
"He might say 'talaq' on the phone to me," she says.
"I don't answer my phone when I see his number. I want to spend the remaining years of my life as his wife. I don't want a divorce."
Muslim women's rights activists are outraged by such incidents.
"There's nothing in the Koran that allows triple, verbal, instantaneous talaq. There's no greater anathema than the kind of talaq that has now become the greatest black mark against gender in Islam," says Sayeeda Hamid.
Raising awareness
There have been attempts in the past to focus on the ills of instant divorce.
The clamour to ban the practice has forced the All India Muslim Personal Law Board to take up the matter at a recent meeting.
A spokesman, Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, says the board does not have the authority to ban the practice.
"The majority of the ulema [clergy] thinks that it's legal, it's binding. They say it's according to the Sharia [Islamic code].
"Now how can the Muslim Personal Law Board take a unilateral decision? The board cannot go against the Shariat."
"But," he says, "there's a consensus among the board that it's a sin and we'll try to discourage it."
To spread the word, mosques have been roped in.
During Friday prayers at a Delhi mosque, more than 1,000 men, young and old, kneel on the floor, listening to Maulana Jalaluddin Umri's sermon.
He devotes two-thirds of the 45-minute-long prayer to talk about the issue.
And it appears to have made an impact on the congregation.
Naseemuddin says the clergy should find a way to ban the practice.
"If you're Muslim, you have to follow the Koran. We have to face the reality and tackle it constructively," he says.
Majid Akhtar Siddiqui, a mechanical engineer, says society must be flexible.
"I have seen real experiences in life, where sometimes problems arise between couples. Now, we have to sort out these problems, not create more problems."
But Sayeeda Hamid thinks an awareness campaign is not enough.
"The first thing that should be done is that they should completely, totally ban triple, verbal, instantaneous talaq. They should simply say it's cancelled, it cannot happen. So the men cannot treat their marriage as something that can be trifled with."
That's little consolation for women like Jahanara and Rehana.
For them the Muslim Personal Law Board's awareness campaign is too little too late.
”Jordan: Women find some freedom in divorce rights,” Women in the Middle East, No. 24, May 2004.
Jordanian women who had had enough of their marriages … were unable to end it until a temporary law granted unhappily married Jordanian women their freedom. Under Khuloe, a woman just has to state she loathes her husband and feels she can no longer fulfil her "wifely duties".
Khuloe is part of a Civil Status Temporary Law, which caused controversy in Jordan when it was issued in late 2001. Jordan's tribal- and Islamist-dominated parliament rejected the law, but the more liberal senate (upper house) passed it temporarily. In the coming months, parliament must review the law again and if passed, it will become permanent.
Islamist, tribal and independent deputies say the law is contrary to Islamic Sharia law, has made divorce too easy and led to broken homes and moral degeneration.
Some 570 women filed for divorce last year, 125 successfully. Others dropped their cases or are awaiting the outcome. Many expect parliament to insist on some changes to the Civil Status Law in order to pass it. Deputies believe Khuloe will remain active for several more months anyway, because a stack of temporary laws awaits review.
Morocco
Pascale Harter, “Divorce divides Morocco and W Sahara,” BBC News, 4 August 2004.
A new family code in Morocco, known as the Mudawana, is having differing effects on women's rights in the Islamic kingdom and the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which falls under Moroccan rule.
For Fatima in Morocco, the law allowed her to leave her husband when he beat her last month.
He had beaten her before, but this time Fatima told him: "The King says you can't beat me anymore".
Earlier this year, Moroccan King Mohammed VI pushed the Mudawana through parliament.
As of February 2004, Moroccan women no longer have to obey their husbands by law, something many Moroccan men saw as enshrining their right to use their fists on disobedient wives.
Fatima's husband asked for forgiveness and Fatima went back to the marital home satisfied she had the equal, if not the upper, hand.
Camels and jewellery
The new Mudawana is undoubtedly a progressive piece of legislation - for women in Morocco - but not necessarily for women in the Western Sahara.
Morocco has administered the Western Sahara since 1975, and legislation passed in Rabat is law in the Western Sahara.
But in terms of women's rights they are two wildly differing cultures.
"For us, if a man beats his wife, he is no longer a man, he is a dog," said Salka, a 45-year-old Saharawi woman, recently divorced for the second time.
In the Western Sahara, if a man beats his wife the minimum he must do to ask her forgiveness is hold a second wedding, with all the gifts of camels and jewellery that entails.
Even so, he will rarely be successful in convincing his wife to return.
Saharawi women divorce their husbands for far lesser misdemeanours.
"I divorced my first husband because I never really fell in love. I divorced my second because he fell in love with someone else," says Salka.
Divorce parties
Polygamy, still allowed but made much more difficult under the new Mudawana, is not uncommon in Morocco. But in the Western Sahara, to most women it is unacceptable.
In Morocco, particularly in the lower and more religious classes, divorce brings great shame on the woman. In the Western Sahara, she throws a party.
"Sadness is while you're married. When you get divorced you laugh again, you're happy because you will meet new people, start a life with someone new," says Salka.
The party is a way of letting everyone know that a woman is available again.
Fatou is a professional divorce-party goer. Sitting on a red carpet, pouring mint tea from an ornate gold-plated set she explained the finer points of a divorce party.
"The party is meant to pay homage to the divorced woman, so that she doesn't feel weak or ashamed.
"We dress up, we get a band to play, and the men who fancy the divorced women bring her presents, like a camel, perfume, or money. It can last for three days, or as long as it takes for the woman to accept another offer," says Fatou.
Alluring
And divorced women in the Western Sahara receive no shortage of offers.
"Since I got divorced this time, there are many men who want to marry me," Souka told me, slapping her thigh and letting out a loud cackle.
"The young men want me even more than the older men do."
Mustafa's wife has been married three times before.
"A divorced woman is more alluring, she is experienced and sure of herself," he explains.
In most of the Muslim world divorce carries with it a great social stigma, and yet, Saharawis are devoutly Muslim.
Naima Chikhaoui, an anthropologist at the national Moroccan Institute of Archaeology, says it is a common misconception that divorce is forbidden by Islam.
It is not the Koran, she says, but the social standing of women in each Muslim country which dictates how divorce is seen there.
"It's true that divorce was and still is a problem in Morocco. But divorce is not a problem for a Saharawi woman because she enjoys a very important social place. Men respect her not only for herself but for her family too."
Another reason, she says, is the Saharawi concept of marriage.
"In the Sahara marriage is built on love, it's not a traditional structure of marriage where a man shows up and says: 'I want to marry your daughter' and she has no say in it."
Shameful
Under the new Mudawana, couples now have to go to court to obtain a divorce rather than just getting a letter of repudiation from an Islamic official.
Women's groups in Morocco say this is a step forward, fewer women are turned out on to the streets with their children to look after, as judges must now award the family home to whoever has custody of the children.
But for Saharawi women, divorce has never presented a problem and Saharawi men too are unhappy about the new rules.
Batoul, a Saharawi man, is being forced to go to court to insist on a divorce settlement.
"It's shameful for a man to ask his wife to go before a judge and claim her rights or her children when all this is automatically taken care of among the families," he says.
Pascale Harter, “Changing status of Morocco's shunned wives,” BBC News, 28 Jan. 2004.
Khadija begs for money in the bustling alleys of the ancient walled city of Rabat, Morocco's capital.
"My husband repudiated me when I was three months pregnant," she says.
Under Morocco's old family code Khadija's husband and thousands of other Moroccan men could verbally divorce their wives at any time, and their decision was legally binding.
Khadija was thrown out of her family home.
Living in a shanty town she supports her two children and an ageing father on what she can beg from passers by.
Times are hard and Khadija has had to put her son in an apprenticeship with a tailor. He is just five years old.
Change
In a strict Muslim society like Morocco's, there is great shame in being a spurned wife.
There is yet more shame in begging on the streets.
But these women are the victims of a family code that gave men in Morocco all of the rights in marriage, and none of the responsibilities.
Now this is about to change. Under a new family code, or the Mudawana as it is known, husbands will now have to go to court to make their repudiation binding and women will no longer be legally required to be "obedient" to their husbands.
Layla Rhiwi and her organisation Spring of Equality, gives legal advice to women on matrimonial law.
She believes the new Mudawana will make a difference to the problem of abandoned women and children living on the streets.
"Under the new family code, whoever keeps the children keeps the marital house. So they will no longer be on the streets. This is an important protection for women."
Walli
Azziza was a child herself when her parents married her to an old man she did not know.
"I was nine and I didn't want to live with my husband so I ran away from my husband's house, but my parents beat me and took me back."
Azziza's marriage was not legal, but what was legal in accordance with the Koran, was that her father as a Walli, or male guardian, should decide her fate for her. Under the new Mudawana a woman from the age of 18, may be her own Walli.
This expert resolution solved the sticking point which could have stopped dead the whole project of changing the Mudawana.
Traditional followers of Morocco's national religion were afraid that the Mudawana would be re-written forsaking Islamic principles, such as that of the Walli.
Street protests in favour of modernising the law were followed by a much larger protest against.
But since coming to the throne in 1999, King Mohammed VI lent his full weight to the idea of a new Mudawana.
The document, the work of a Royal Commission allows for practices enshrined in the Koran, such as polygamy, but makes them much harder in practice.
Minors
Nadia Yassine, of the Association of Justice and Spirituality is perhaps Morocco's best known Muslim leader.
She participated in the street demonstrations against changes to the family code in 2000 because she says, the proposals at the time were un-Islamic and the result of foreign influence.
Now a backer of the king's Mudawana, perhaps surprisingly, Nadia Yassine says it does not go far enough because women remain minors under the penal code, which has not changed.
On paper at least, with the adoption of the new Mudawana, Morocco is set to become one of the most progressive countries in terms of women's rights in the Arab world.
Next, says Layla Rhiwi of Spring Time of Equality, the magistrates and judges must be retrained.
"They are old, they are sexist and they will not change over night," she says. However, she is hopeful.
Khadija and Azziza, scrabbling for small change in the medina are also hopeful: "I trust in Allah, I trust in the king, that one day I will have enough to eat," says Azziza.
"Freedom costs money," says Nadia Yassine.
"You can't liberate women without giving them any means. If a woman wants to get divorced and she is illiterate and unemployed, how she can exercise this freedom?"
Pakistan
"Pakistan," DOS Report 2005.
Family law provides protections for women in cases of divorce, including requirements for maintenance, and lays out clear guidelines for custody of minor children and their maintenance. Many women were unaware of these legal protections or unable to obtain legal counsel to enforce them. Divorced women were often left with no means of support and were ostracized by their families.
Links
The Global Persecution of Women
Glossary
