Saudi Arabia has taken another step to curb domestic violence against women by implementing a tough law that fines wife-beaters up to SR 50,000 and hands down jail sentence if found guilty of spousal abuse.
According to Al-Arabiya, the Ministry of Justice established minimum fines of SR5,000 with the maximum set at SR 50,000. Offenders could spend one month to one year in jail with men found guilty of multiple beatings facing up to two years.
This is a welcome development for a society that has long held the belief that what happens between a husband and wife behind closed doors is nobody’s business but theirs. The attitude is so entrenched in the daily lives of Saudis that the police and courts routinely fail to protect female victims despite our religious principles that demand that we protect our wives, sisters and mothers. An expat could spend considerable time in custody for assaulting a Saudi man, but a Saudi man rarely saw the inside of a jail for routinely beating his wife.
The new laws come on the heels of legislation passed last August, which criminalized domestic abuse against women, children and servants. At the same time an awareness campaign was launched — with its now iconic photo of a woman wearing a niqab and having a black eye — to urge Saudis to report instances of abuse at home, schools and in public places.
New legislation does not alone control domestic violence, and if we were expecting significant results over the next year, I wouldn’t hold my breath. For one, the government doesn’t always follow through with implementation and enforcement. For another, new laws don’t necessarily mean that long-held beliefs that a husband or father has complete authority to administer corporal punishment to the female members of his family will change anytime soon.
While the new laws are to be applauded, it’s incumbent upon the Ministry of Education to establish programs that teach young boys at the elementary, middle and high school levels to respect their mothers and sisters and understand that physical aggression is un-Islamic.
Fines and prison terms are necessary for convicted abusers. But mandatory community programs for men to remind them of their Islamic duties to their wives and daughters as well as sessions in anger management will help mitigate domestic violence in the long run.
Ministries also need to be more on the ball. The National Society for Human Rights complained last December that the dedicated hot line to report domestic abuse by the Ministry of Social Affairs remained open until 10 p.m., and then shut down until the next day.
Further, the new legislation does not address the institutionalized abuse of women and children in which the demands of various ministries require women who perform even the most basic functions in society to have a male guardian present. Nor are there effective legislation providing women with equal rights in domestic courts. Even worse is the requirement that an eyewitness to domestic abuse must be present in order to file a police complaint, which is virtually impossible in family situations.
These are serious obstacles, but I am confident that we are on the road to solving most of these issues that will inevitably improve the lot of Saudi women in the near future.
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