Divorce in Yemen
YO:
Divorce rates in Yemen have been rising over the last few years, tearing families apart and putting women in particular at risk.
Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that in 2005, 3,260 marriages out of 48,085 ended in divorce. These numbers are up from 2004, when there were only 1,217 divorces out of 36,165 marriages, and also from 2003, when there were 1,457 out of 27,244 marriages, according to statistics from the Ministry of Justice. In Yemen, men can divorce their wives without asking for their consent. And often, this decision is taken too lightly, said Nabila al-Mofti, a lawyer.
“Marriage is a partnership, so breaking up such a bond is also a decision both partners must be involved in,” she said. Al-Mofti argues the new legal statutes are unfair to women. In many cases, men divorce their first wife after marrying their second, so they can save expenses, said lawyer Khaled al-Ansi. Until 1999, a law required that a woman had the right to a year’s compensation from her husband if he chose to divorce her. Now, women have no rights.
The law does not state what compensation should be given to a divorced woman, who may end up without a way to make ends meet. The only protection women have comes from Islamic regulations, which say that a divorced woman who remains unmarried for three months after a divorce must have her expenses paid by her ex-husband. “I think that all the organizations concerned with women rights have to demand the rights of the divorced women,” said al-Ansi. Shawqi al-Qadhi, an MP and an Islamic preacher, said that one of the main purposes of Islam is to protect the rights of the weak. “Islam respects women, whether as a wife or a divorcee.”
As long as the divorced woman is the weakest of the partnership, Islam will support her. “So the constitution of the country should follow this base,” he said. Taqia al-Kohali, 35, is a woman badly hurt by divorce. She divorced her husband after 12 years of abuse. He used to beat her and humiliate her, she said. “I hate to think of the marriage because I hate all men,” she said. “I was too young when I married him. I filed a suit against that man, and I got divorced.” Al-Kohali now works as a cleaner at the juvenile court; she has to support herself because she has no relatives. Because she initiated her divorce, she gets no support from her ex-husband. Al-Kohali now finds her happiness in raising her dead sister’s five children.
“I have no children and I do not want any longer to marry,” she said. But most women do not get to choose whether or not to divorce—it is their husbands who leave. The danger in most divorces is that women are often left with no income and no means of supporting themselves. Furthermore, many divorcees are elderly, illiterate women with very little education, who are utterly unprepared for the psychological toll that divorce will take on them. Lawyer Shadha Mohammed Nasser agrees with al-Mofti that the present statutes are inadequate to protect women. “In the past, the law was a little bit better, but unfortunately much of it changed after the 1994 war,” she said.
“You find women who have been married for 10 or 15 years, who suddenly find themselves out in the street.” Nasser blames the trend on women’s illiteracy, as well as on early marriage, particularly on the man’s side. “Many of these men think of their partners as nothing more than cattle,” she said. Sumiah al-Khawlani, a lawyer, told the story of a woman who was tormented to the point of tears because her husband talked about divorce all the time. In Islamic law if a man speaks the word Talaq, this means the woman is divorced and can no longer stay in the home with him. “Looking at her was heartbreaking,” said al-Khawlani. “She ran away to Sana’a looking for a job.”
A 25-year-old woman, twice divorced, agreed to tell her story, so long as she would remain anonymous. The first man she married abused her. “He always beat me up and tried to humiliate me, and I simply could not bear it anymore,” she said. She has two children by him. As far as the second divorce is concerned, she has yet to figure out what went wrong and why he left her. “He left me and his son at my father’s house for two years and he never paid for any of my personal expenses,” she said. “I loved him so much and I could not believe that he could leave me so easily.”
She thought that he married her for pleasure and when she asked him for a divorce, he actually agreed. She talked about the financial hardships she has endured as a single mother and how her unmarried brother helped her with some of her basic needs. “My brother will not allow me to work, and I have to take care of my children,” she said. Her second husband is hardly paying for child support, and her first husband never pays a penny for his children. Al-Qadhi thinks part of the problem is that many people are simply not aware of the abusive nature of some divorce cases.” The reasons behind some of these divorce cases are just absurd,” she said. “Sometimes, a verbal altercation between wife and mother-in-law will end up in separation.”
Al-Qadhi thinks there is a dire need for regulation through legal means as “this is turning into a difficult social issue to control.” As a lawmaker, he believes the likelihood of debating the issue on the floor will mostly depend on activists. “If some sort of study is conducted, we can convince other members of parliament to pass a law,” he says.
Copyright 2002 – 2006 Yemen Observer
