Launching the Campaign “#1000 جمعية” (#1000 associations#) to call the President and the Egyptian Parliamentarians to Criminalize Early Marriage

Press Release

Launching the Campaign “#1000 جمعية” (#1000 associations#) to call the President and the Egyptian Parliamentarians to Criminalize Early Marriage

The Association of the Egyptian Female Lawyers (AEFL) has launched the campaign # 1000 جمعية# to call the president and the Egyptian parliamentarians to criminalize early marriage. The representatives of NGOs (participants of the project of raising social awareness regarding risks of early marriage) are participating in the campaign.

In the context of the project implemented by AEFL to raise awareness regarding early marriage, the representatives of participant NGOs met on 19^th August 2021 to sign the statement below to call the president Abd El Fattah El Sisi and the Egyptian parliamentarians to approve the draft law of criminalizing girls marriage to protect Egyptian girls against the risks of early marriage and combating this phenomenon.

The Statement

Despite the issuance of law no. 64 of 2010 which criminalizes forced marriage of girls and although child law no. 126 of 2008 criminalizes it in article 116, yet the phenomenon of early marriage is witnessing an increasing continuous rates. In 2018, the rates of girls forced marriage in Egypt reached 15% from the total of marriages. In addition, about 117.220 early marriage cases have been recorded this year.

This is because of different factors among which are non-activation of law no. 64 of 2010 regarding human trafficking, some shortage in a number of its articles, lack of awareness of Egyptian families especially mothers as they do not know about and are not aware of the danger of this phenomenon on their girls on health, psychological and legal levels.

Based on the important role played by CSOs in supporting the state in solving economic and social problems side by side with the governmental institutions, the NGOs networking of the project of raising social awareness regarding the risks of early marriage worked together to submit draft law including some of deterrent punitive articles to criminalize girls marriage.

Hence the network member associations and organizations call the president to discuss the draft law and submit it to the parliament to be discussed and approved in its session in October, in addition to urging state institutions to mobilize efforts to guarantee law activation.

Finally, AEFL calls all working association and organizations in Egypt to sign the statement and send the signature on the association’s e-mail aefl2008@yahoo.com