New Report Paints Devastating Picture Of Violence Against Women In Egypt

A leading human rights group said Wednesday that Egypt is failing to protect its women from widespread violence and criticized the country’s authorities for “token” legal reforms that have not translated into real change.

The damning report, released by Amnesty International, urged the government to present a comprehensive strategy to combat violence against women before the upcoming parliamentary election.

“Recent measures to protect women taken have been largely symbolic,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International, said in a press release. “The authorities must prove that these are more than cosmetic changes by making sustained efforts to implement changes and challenge deeply entrenched attitudes prevalent in Egyptian society.”

“Women in Egypt are entrapped by institutional, systematic violence,” she told The Huffington Post by email. “Unless combatting that violence becomes a priority, unless women can live safe and dignified lives, no revolution has taken place. We must overthrow the Mubarak at home as well as on the street, not just the one who sat in the presidential palace. That double revolution that us women must undertake — against the misogyny of the state and the street, and by extension the home, is Egypt’s key to freedom.”

Read the whole report here.

The Huffington Post