There's a divorce every three minutes in Egypt. Al-Ahram Weekly goes over a stark report There were 141,478 divorces in Egypt in 2009. Some 53.1 per cent of those cases were in urban areas and 46.9 per cent in rural communities, Reem Leila reports. These were part of the findings of the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) announced at a press conference on 6 January by CAPMAS head Abu Bakr El-Guindi. The report was conducted on married couples ranging between 18-65 years old. The figures have been making newspaper headlines since their release last week, mainly because they sound the alarm bells over the fate of Egypt's family life. The report also said there was a divorce every three minutes in Egypt, 16 every hour -- in return for 87 marriages per hour. The overall number of marriages during 2009 was 759,000, 62.8 per cent of which took place in rural areas while 37.8 per cent were in cites. The CAPMAS report said there were 2,080 marriages on average a day, meaning 1.5 marriages a minute. The report further noted that couples in the age group ranging between 25-30 reported the highest rate of divorce -- 28,350 cases -- thus forming 20 per cent of the overall divorce cases in the country. Couples in the age group between 18-20 reported the lowest rate of divorce, with only 690 cases, forming just 0.5 per cent of divorce cases. The CAPMAS report revealed that the percentage of female divorcees at the age group ranging between 20-25 years are the highest, as they form 35,277 of the total divorce cases. While females at the age of 65 years have reported the lowest figure among the overall number of divorced women, they constituted 626 cases, thus forming 0.4 per cent of the total cases. El-Guindi said male divorcees with middle level education constitute 33.3 per cent, whereas female divorcees with the same educational background are 30 per cent among divorced cases. The report further pointed out that khul' -- where a wife returns the dowry to her husband in return for a divorce -- had the highest among all divorce cases, constituting 66.2 per cent of divorce rulings. There were 1,863 khul' cases from among 2,815 divorce rulings. The CAPMAS report also confirmed that the highest divorce rates were reported in 6 October governorate, while the lowest were in Assiut. Many experts agree that while divorce rates have increased in the past few years, they have not reached alarming levels. Still, something should be done to prevent divorce from increasing. Sociologist Salwa El-Amri of the National Centre for Sociological and Criminological Research (NCSCR) partially attributes the high percentage of divorce to high rates of unemployment among youth. "Unemployment forces our youth into illegal migration, crime and drug dealing," El-Amri said, calling on all concerned government officials to work on resolving the problem. However, sociologist Mahmoud Ouda who lectures in the Sociology Department at Ain Shams University said the new divorce census is "mildly frightening". "The divorce percentage mentioned in the recent CAPMAS report was not comprehensive. Nothing was mentioned about divorce rates among couples of higher educational levels or if it was conducted on all age groups of married couples. "We can't consider this percentage alarming because if we overlook absolute figures and consider divorce rates, we will find them generally lesser than marriage figures." However, the absolute number of divorces is high, Ouda adds, because the population is mushrooming. "So as the absolute number of people increases, the absolute number of people getting divorced must also increase," Ouda explains. Seif El-Etrebi, a judge in the Family Court, agrees with Ouda. "The number of divorces has increased simply because of population growth, but it has never reached the level of a phenomenon," he maintains. El-Etrebi said numbers are not always an accurate indication. "CAPMAS officials only copy out figures of divorces without analysing them," he said. "The recent report of CAPMAS is not an accurate indication of divorce rates in Egypt. There was a previous report issued by the CAPMAS last year providing different figures." "Many of those who file for divorce or khul' may simply change their minds, and reconcile with their spouses, or their case could be rejected by a court," El-Etrebi said. "There are also men who take advantage of their right to repeal a divorce within three months of obtaining it. If figures are to be taken as any indication, they have to be accurately gathered, professionally analysed and studied."
