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On Monday, the Lebanese parliament approved a bill providing for the punishment of sexual harassment, especially in the workplace, the first in Lebanon in this regard, and also approved basic amendments to the law on domestic violence. The United Nations welcomed the passage of the law on harassment, but human rights monitors warned of many loopholes in it. .
During a session that lasted about three hours, and on its agenda dozens of proposed laws, the House of Representatives approved, according to the National Information Agency, “the bill intended to punish the crime of sexual harassment, especially in the labor sphere”.
The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jan Kubi, welcomed the passage of the law as “a step towards the empowerment of human and women’s rights.”
He added in a tweet that “the application is the key.” But the Legal Agenda, a non-governmental organization specialized in legal matters and concerned with explaining and interpreting the laws, saw that the law contains several problems, among which it stands out that it addresses the issue from a “moral point of view that seeks to protect the society and not the victim ”.
Karim Nammour, from the Legal Notebook, explained several other problems, among them “that the only way for the victim is to resort to the criminal justice system … which means that the matter will be public when the victim passes through a police station, a judge of instruction, then judges, and this is a great obstacle for the victims and not an incentive to file complaints. ” Until the law requires the victim to “prove the act of harassment and its consequences, and this is a burden in itself”, while the harasser had to prove that he did not.
According to the law, the punishment ranges from one month to two years in prison or a fine ranging from twenty-three minimum wages, which is equivalent to 675,000 Syrian pounds, or 450 dollars according to the official exchange rate and less than 100 dollars according to the black market .
The National Commission of Lebanese Women, in turn, welcomed the approval of the law, “for Lebanon to have for the first time a law that punishes the perpetrators of this crime and provides protection and support to its victims.” The feminist movement in Lebanon has intensified over the last decade, coinciding with the increase in media coverage of domestic violence and the murder of women at the hands of their husbands.
In April 2014, the Domestic Violence Law was passed to be the first in Lebanon in this regard, but human rights organizations considered that it did not address basic issues such as marital rape and economic and psychological violence. Lawyer Leila Awada from the non-governmental organization “Stop Violence and Exploitation” said On women’s rights, the parliament made several fundamental amendments to the law, including the “imposition of a penalty for committing economic and psychological violence”, but he turned a blind eye to many other problems, including “marital rape.”
Aya Majzoub of Human Rights Watch considered the passage of the Law on Punishment of Harassment and the amendments to the Law on Domestic Violence as a “positive step, even if it was late and insufficient.” He added: “Marrying the victim should not exempt the sex offender from punishment.”
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