By Sarah Barakat
Executive Summary
Despite some relative progress, countries in MENA continue to be generally ranked amongst the worst performers on gender equality. Indeed, while the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report for 2016 assesses that the region has closed more than 60% of the overall gender gap, MENA, however, continues to rank last1. Within the region, the country with the lowest ranking is Yemen, with 57% of its gender gap closed. Figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 2014 Social Institutions and Gender Index also place the region at the bottom of the scale, with marked low performance in discriminatory family code and restricted civil liberties sub-indices. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Yemen (the four countries of focus in the present assessment) have all ratified CEDAW with reservations, and their personal status laws are widely seen to be among the primary sources of discrimination against women in legislation and practice. Women face various challenges in their attempts to seek and get justice. Despite some promising legal awareness initiatives (mostly led by the civil society), women’s knowledge of their rights and family laws is still limited. They also lack social capital and financial means to claim their rights, and the systems set in place to provide financial support still remain insufficient and, at times, ineffective. Women’s pursuit of justice is further limited by deeply-entrenched patriarchal values that are at play at community and court levels. Though some laws in the target countries have been positively amended in the recent past, women still face discrimination in the judicial system based on their sex, their religion, and their financial status.
Following a first phase carried out between 2011 and 2014, Oxfam is currently implementing the Women’s Access to Justice in Middle East and North Africa Project (Phase II) in partnership with civil society organisations in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Yemen.
The project aims at contributing to equitable access of poor and vulnerable women in the target countries to formal and informal justice, with a focus on personal status laws relating to divorce, child custody, alimony, and inheritance. To achieve the immediate objective of enabling poor and vulnerable women to claim their rights using formal and informal justice systems, Oxfam and partners have designed activities for four intervention levels: individual, community, policy, and regional learning and networking.
The present assessment has been commissioned to explore the impact of the cost of legal services on women’s access to justice in personal status and family law proceedings in the four target countries. It specifically aims at providing an overview of the current situation of legal fees in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Yemen, looking at both formal and informal/hidden costs, and exploring the causes of high costs and the extended duration of the cases related to personal status and family laws. In line with the project’s target populations, the assessment looked at Muslim courts in Egypt, Jordan (Zarqa), and Yemen (Hodeida); while, in Lebanon, it focused on the Sunni court in Tripoli and the Melkite Greek Catholic, Maronite, and Greek Orthodox courts in Mount Lebanon. The methodology followed consists of a combination of literature review, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions in each of the target countries.
Findings are presented by country using the three access-to-justice parameters identified in the terms of reference (Accessibility, effectiveness and affordability), and questions are asked for each. The sections on accessibility specifically focus on identifying bodies tasked with implementing personal status and family laws and exploring whether they have any provisions for support of low-income and/or socially marginalised individuals. The sections on effectiveness look at unpacking the different processes and procedures, identifying stakeholders, and determining the average length of procedures and the reasons for delays, if any. The sections on affordability attempt to provide an as-accurate-as-possible estimation of the overall costs of PSL cases, looks at three different types of costs, and correlates these to the overall cost of living and the average income per country. Costs were classified as: Formal costs (all known fees and payments that are, or can be, consigned by receipts); informal costs (all unofficial payments that may or may not be common practice paid to facilitate the judicial process. These include, for example, the costs of payment for summons and/or retrieval of documentation and the un-equivocated quid pro quo payments to influence the speed and/or outcome of the process); and indirect/hidden costs (all costs that are not paid to third parties and which include, for example, transportation to court and the cost of taking leave from work). While the findings section provides an analysis by country, the findings are presented here by parameter, for ease of comparison.