Family and Population Minister Moushira Khattab warned this week that soaring national divorce rates threatened Egyptian society with "collapse.” Khattab called for “binding" legislation that would not discriminate between men and women and that would serve to safeguard the interests of children. At a conference organized by the National Center for Social and Criminal Studies, Khattab also noted that domestic violence had become an all-too-common phenomenon. “People aren't aware of how damaging violence can be to a family,” she said. “Street children are largely the result of family violence.” “Families in Egypt and the Arab world often fail to report domestic violence to the authorities,” she said. “How, then, can we be expected to protect the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators?" She went on to note that the ministry's telephone hot-line for reporting incidents of domestic violence (16000) had received some 1.8 million calls since it was launched in 2005. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
