Sunday, March 8, 2009

Algeria: Associations: Family Code Aggravates Violence

Six Algerian associations came together Sunday in a community that has adopted a charter denouncing violence against women and promoting the struggle for “equal civil laws in all areas,” in the text sent to the press.

The charter of the Algerian associations against violence practised on women said that the inferiority of women institutionalized by the Family Code aggravates violence.

In addition, the education system leads to “alienation of society and women in particular” and “reproduce, often by the latter, backward social patterns”.

The violence can be “institutional, by the Family Code” or “physical, psychological, political, sexual and economic”, within the “family, society and workplace,” says the charter.

It lists “beatings, sexual abuse, confinement, forced marriages, psychological harassment, economic violence and sexual harassment at work and in schools.” It denounced the employment of little girls “no, or little, paid girls” called “trafficking”.

The associations call to fight for the adoption of egalitarian civil laws in all areas, an improvement of the criminal code regarding sexual harassment at work or the assumption by the state for victims of violence.

The charter also requires “the lifting of all reservations to international treaties and conventions against discrimination against women.”

The six associations: SOS Women in Distress, the Network Wassila, the women of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, Djazaïrouna, Tharwa n'fatma N'soumer Women and the Committee of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) finally put in place procedures to work to make a real difference in society.

Adopted in 1984 and amended in 2005, the Family Code is often denounced by associations as being below the Constitution, which proclaims equality of each and all. The woman needs, for example, to marry, the presence of a tutor, from or out of her family.

Ennahar online/ M. O.

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