CAIRO: Prominent Egyptian female religious leader Soad Saleh has called on the country ministry of justice to amend its current marriage certificate regulations in order to protect the privacy and rights of Egyptian women. She said that the ministry should allow a third option to be written on the license that reads “never been married” as a means of protecting the honor of women who have been raped. Currently, it is legally binding in Egypt that women must write “virgin” or “divorced” or “widow” – the latter two considered one category – on any marriage license in the country. By adding a third option, Saleh believes it will be able to hide any past actions by a woman and “describe the case of any raped girl that is about to get married.” Saleh argued that the raped woman is “not a virgin and it is not a divorced,” adding that as a divorced woman she has, obviously, already been married. The use of the word virgin to describe a woman raped in the marriage license “would make the victim lose her legal right in possible cases against the rapist” if it was being tried in court. Egyptian rights groups have said this sort of thing could be good for the country, however, Hafez Abu Saeda, the head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, says that what we could end up seeing is something where when written, everyone will know what it means. “If, for example, all single women, whether virgins or not, choose to use this new option, then it will be successful and a good idea, but if it turns into a statement for women who have been raped or had pre-marital sex, then it won't be successful,” he said. Rape is a crime that can have the death penalty handed out. While there is a growing debate over victims unwillingness to report such incidents fearing their reputation will be greatly affected, more and more women have begun to speak out against this growing problem. Womens rights activists in the country have been encouraging Egyptian women who have been raped to inform the police and guide them to the perpetrator in an attempt to make police – who have long shunned women's issues – aware of their legal rights. The New Women's Foundation in Cairo says that in the past year, more and more women are speaking out against rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment, making it possible to track statistics for the first time in modern history. **reporting by Mohamed Abdel Salam BM
