EGYPT: Tourism Marriages, Women Protest Against Bill

The bill will “put a price tag on tourism marriages,” a women’s rights activist argued.

Over a dozen women demonstrated on Tuesday night against a bill passed earlier this month that would basically “legalize tourism marriages,” they claimed.

With bruises painted on their eyes using make-up, and tape over their mouths to denounce domestic violence the bill could expose them to, they gathered in front of the Journalists' Syndicate.

The bill was meant to comply with the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. However, according to activists and human rights groups, the bill stipulates that foreign men would have to pay about US$7,000 in investment certificates at the National Bank of Egypt if they wished to marry women 25 or more years younger than they were.

Lawyer Rabab Abdu, vice president of the Egyptian Society to Support Juveniles and Human Rights, told Aswat Masriya that the minister’s decision to “put a price tag on tourism marriages” flies in the face of efforts to combat human trafficking.

"Now these women can marry these men, who are decades older, only on condition that the men can afford the price. This takes place in a legal setting, with the blessing of the ministry of justice," she added.

According to a 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report, foreign men, especially from Gulf countries “purchase Egyptian women and girls for ‘temporary’ or ‘summer’ marriages for the purpose of prostitution or forced labor; these arrangements are often facilitated by the victims’ parents and marriage brokers, who profit from the transaction.”

Girls can be as young as 11 years old when they get married, and often come from poor rural villages. Some girls can be forced into these summer marriages up to 60 times by the time they turn 18, stated Egypt’s Child Anti-Trafficking Unit at the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood in 2013.