CAIRO: Khalid Dinnawi says that since he and his wife agreed to divorce, his visitation rights only allow him to spend three hours a week with his four-year-old daughter. “Lara spends more time with the driver than she does with me,” he said. He complains that even the three hours are not guaranteed, saying that out of nine visits, his wife only brought Lara five times. He added that Lara's mother pulled her out of the school where he teaches, so he wouldn't see her. Dinnawi is one of hundreds of single fathers caught in custody battles, prompting them to form the Saving the Egyptian Family Movement, which aims at “rescuing” the family from custody laws, maintaining that the connection between children and their fathers after divorce and working on bridging the gap between mothers and fathers for the benefit of the children. Egyptian custody laws were amended in 2007 and under the new law, ‘al rueya al shareya,' or what is known in western law as “access to the child,” remains controlled by the mother. The law allows the father to see his children for three hours every week in a public place. “I'm forced to meet my children for three hours at the Youth Center…it's like a prison,” said Abouzaid Badr, an employee at the Ministry of Culture. Samia Ezzat has not seen her grandchild for one year since her former daughter-in-law took him to Alexandria, denying them visitation rights. “My son pays alimony regularly but she is not letting him meet his child, this is a punishment to the child not only the parent,” she said. Although the law, in theory, doesn't sanction the mother to miss visitations, many argue that it gives women the upper hand. Besides denying the father custody of his children until the age of 15, it also made custody a matter of choice for the children once they reach that age. The child chooses with which parent to remain in custody until marriage for females and the age of 21 for males. Saving the Egyptian Family Movement is calling for a number of demands including amending the law to give fathers visitation rights of up to 48 hours or not less than 24 hours. “We are proposing a law that respects both the mother and the father, we want the law to follow Islamic jurisdiction,” said Sherif Abdel Wahab, lawyer and among the founders of the movement. “As Islamic Sharia stipulates, we want custody given to fathers, without the children choosing, at age seven for boys and nine for girls and allowing kinship,” he explained. Their demands also include penalizing the custodian parent if they fail to bring the child to the visits and banning all children of divorced parents from traveling without the consent of both parents. “What we are proposing also subjects the father to punishment if he violates the law, and the same applies to the mother,” noted Abdel Wahab. The movement has organized a number of protests following the January 25 Revolution, the first of which was in front of the Ministry of Justice where they proposed their demands. The minister then referred the issue to the Islamic Research Center for a ruling. Protests were held outside the Islamic Research Center earlier this month, by fathers, grandparents and others, as the law was being discussed inside. It referred the issue to psychologists who will have the final say and are scheduled to make a decision within the upcoming weeks. Expert opinions Women's rights activists also criticized the child custody law, saying it is flawed and does not consider the child's best interest. “Three hours a week are not enough to form a bond between a child and a parent, whether it is the mother or the father. Visitations are the child's right to see his or her parents, not a right for parents only, as they have a right to have a constant relationship with their parent who is not their custodian,” explained Nazly El-Sherbiny, lawyer at the Supreme Constitutional Court and board member of the Alliance for Arab Women. Furthermore, El-Sherbiny explained, the child doesn't develop a relationship with the grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other family members. “We want visitations to extend to hosting the child for a sufficient amount of time in order for a relationship to develop between them,” she noted. El-Sherbiny said that whoever violates the agreement should be penalized and that the child should be banned from traveling without the consent of both parents to prevent someone from taking them abroad. “This goes both ways for females and males, there must be penalties so people would be obliged to follow the law,” she asserted. Amr El-Shimmy, legal counselor at the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), which is the governmental body responsible for drafting all policies related to childhood and motherhood, finds the custody and visitation law a blatant violation of children's rights. The child law of 2008, which was considered a milestone in child rights in Egypt, defines the situations which jeopardizes either the child's security, health, life or morals, and cites custody and visitation among these situations. “Whoever violates the visitation agreement without any excuse is endangering the child's mental and psychological health,” he said. When drafting the child law of 2008, the NCCM added a penalty pertaining to whoever violates the visitation but the People's Assembly removed it saying it didn't want to increase the strain within the family by penalizing one of the parents. El-Shimmy also explained that there are numerous other flaws in the law, such as limiting the visitations to public places. “This is the child's rights [at stake] not the parent's,” he said. However, he explained that besides looking into the custody and visitation articles, the entire family law has to be reviewed as well with all its clauses related to marriage, divorce and alimony as they are all interdependent, pointing out that NCCM has started looking into the family law before the January 25 Revolution.
