Tunisia, the failure of the law that was supposed to stop domestic violence: “The authorities fail to protect women”

ROME – History. Nahla is forty years old and lives with her husband in Ben Arous, one of the largest cities in the country. About her Her experience of domestic violence about her-she told Human Rights Watch (HRW) – it had already started when she was a child, with her father treating her differently from her brothers. Nahla hoped that marriage could be an escape from the violence and instead her new life quickly turned into hell. “My husband started hitting me on my wedding night: I was menstruating and didn’t want to have sex, he didn’t want to accept it. So he hit me and forced me. He usually calls me a bitch, he tells me I’m worthless. I didn’t want to complain, until in March 2021 he hit me on the head with a brick. In me he saw the devil – she said – and he wanted to destroy me ”. After these experiences Nahla filed a complaint, but her husband spoke to the police who convinced the woman to withdraw the complaint. Even after a second complaint, the police refused to protect her. So she Nahla went to court, but once again she didn’t find a hearing. Her desperation led her to try to jump from the window of the courthouse, but someone managed to hold her back. “Even if they put my husband in prison, what will happen to me? I have no money, my family doesn’t want to take me in, neither do the centers I’ve turned to for assistance. I feel like I’m walking to my grave.”

data on violence. Some have been locked up in a room for several days; someone else beaten with objects; some raped, some forced to work without pay. All the women interviewed by HRW have suffered humiliation of all kinds, physical and verbal. In 2021, the Tunisian police recorded nearly sixty-nine thousand reports of violence against women and girls. But the real extent of domestic violence is difficult to assess, due to the scarce availability of data but above all due to the social and economic pressure placed on women to tolerate male aggression. A survey conducted by the Women’s Ministry in 2021 had already found that around forty-nine percent of Tunisian women have been victims of domestic violence in their lifetime. These numbers then increased with the Covid-19 pandemic, to the point that, again according to data from the Ministry, in 2020 cases of gender-based violence were seven times higher than in previous years.

The complaint of Human Rights Watch. Despite the country adopting one of the strictest and most progressive laws in the Arab world and North Africa in 2017 against violence against women, non-enforcement of the rules – underlines the HRW report – ultimately continues to expose them to a long series of abuses . In fact, the authorities do not respond to requests for help, do not investigate, do not offer protection against violence. And the lack of funding for support and reception networks leaves many women without a way out, without the possibility of defending themselves from the aggressor, even when this is the father or husband. “Tunisia will not be able to continue to present itself as a leading country in the Arab world for women’s rights if it does not begin to consider domestic violence as a serious crime,” writes Kenza Ben Azouz, researcher at HRW and author of the report.

Law 58 of 2017. The law guarantees the right of abused women to have medical and psychological assistance. But most health personnel are not trained enough to screen for cases of abuse. In 2020, the only center dedicated to the psychological well-being of women victims of violence had to close due to lack of funds. The law still states that women who have suffered violence have the right to be accommodated in emergency shelters, but the legislator has never allocated sufficient funds to maintain them. Especially far from Tunis, in inland areas, women fleeing violence find it difficult to find a place to go. The country currently has ten centers that welcome women victims of violence, for a maximum of one hundred and eighty-six people. The Women’s Ministry plans to open new centers by 2024, at least one for each governorate. But alongside political decisions – human rights activists say – we need to accompany an adequate information campaign, to combat the stigma that falls on women who leave home to escape violence.