Egypt President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday called for a new law tightening divorce procedures for Muslims.
Egyptian law currently grants a Muslim husband the right to divorce his wife in her absence and without her knowledge. He may initiate and conclude all the divorce procedures himself, only letting her know at the final stage.
President Sisi said that we are a country keen on maintaining our society, and that we have to issue a law that requires the husband and the wife to be present in person, at the same time, in front of the Ma'zoun (public notary, marriage official) for divorce to take place, thereby enabling the couple to reconsider.
The divorce percentage is high, and 40 percent of the 900,000 marriages unions every year end up in divorce within 5 years, Sisi said during a speech he gave at the ceremony marking the National Police Day.
Egypt saw about 200,000 divorce cases during 2015, which marks a 10.8 per cent increase in divorces from the previous year, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said last year.
The total number of divorces in 2015 reached 199,867 in comparison with 180,244 cases in 2014, CAPMAS said in its annual report on marriages and divorces.
The CAPMAS said that the figure of 2015 is the highest divorce rate in two decades. The rate reached 2.2 cases per 1,000 people in 2015, which represents an 83 percent rise compared to the beginning of the period 1996-2015, according to the agency.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
