Deputies of the protest present a bill on the fight against violence against women in the Lebanese Parliament, March 28, 2024. (Credit: NNA)
BEIRUT — In an effort to bolster the issue of violence against women through legislative means, a group of opposition MPs presented a bill to Parliament Thursday, drafted in collaboration with the NGO KAFA.
Opposition MPs Najat Saliba, Paula Yaacoubian, Halima Kaakour, Cynthia Zarazir, Michel Doueihy, Firas Hamdane and Marc Daou presented the proposed piece of legislation, according to the National News Agency, after having "examined the situation of women, the different types of violence they suffer, and the laws that fail to meet the need for prevention, prosecution, protection, criminalization, provision of necessary services and compensation for damages caused to victims," Saliba told Parliament.
Speaking on behalf of the bill's co-creators, Saliba explained some of the proposed legislation's main intentions.
One of the goals is to create a system whereby victims of abuse can obtain a restraining order "whether or not they have filed a complaint" against someone who threatening harm, extending the reach of official measures for the protection of victims "to all forms of violence, including harassment and rape."
The bill also proposes the appointment of "specialized judges" and the establishment of "specialized courts" so that cases of violence against women aren't held up in a backlog of judicial cases. The text calls for tougher penalties in certain laws, such as those concerned with harassment and domestic violence.
The MPs called for the creation of a victims' support fund, financed by the fines imposed on the perpetrators of the violence committed against them.
This measure comes on the coattails of a year that several women's rights associations denounced as "unprecedented." Several femicides were recorded in Lebanon and the level of violence against women in the country is on the rise, according to Kafa and other women's rights organizations.
KAFA estimated that, in the first six months of 2023 alone, 12 women were killed, six experienced attempted murder, and seven committed suicide — and these tallies only include reported cases.
It was until the end of 2020 that Lebanon passed a law criminalizing sexual harassment in the workplace. Around the same time, Parliament amended the 2014 law on domestic violence, enabling women who are victims of violence by their spouses to include their children under the age of 13 in the protection decision, bypassing the legal age limit for custody.