Early, tourist or seasonal marriages are a widespread phenomenon in the Egyptian society, especially among young girls, young ex-prisoners, marginalized women or victims of violence. The period of this type of marriage is usually quite short and it often relies on a certain type of contracts where the man has the right to annul the contract at any time. If this happens the girl cannot prove that the marriage ever existed, and this leads to many problems if she has a baby. Moreover, this kind of marriage constrains young girls to use various means of contraception at a very young age which results in very negative repercussions on their reproductive health. However this kind of marriage is forbidden by the Egyptian law on human’s trafficking.

To this end, Start Initiative for Social Justice and Human Rights (SICJHR) in partnership with the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) will be campaigning against early and tourist marriage. The campaign will focus on the governorates of Ismailia, Port Said and Charkia.

The goal of the campaign is to form a team of volunteers in order to raise awareness among the local communities and the decision makers in all three governorates in order to significantly reduce the number of early and tourist marriages and to provide psycho-social and legal assistance to the victims of such type of marriages.

The campaign includes psycho-social and judicial training for young girls victims of these marriages or who are at risk, outreach activities addressed to their families including door-to-door flyers distribution, the production and the dissemination of audiovisual material, the launch of an electronic petition and the collection of signature against early and tourist marriage.

To date, SICJHR continues to collect e-signatures against early and tourist marriage, ans has organized a popular meeting in the town of Qahla-t-Jabla, in collaboration with Charkia Youth Association and in presence of number of legal experts, religious figures and psychiatrists, with the aim of raising the local community´s awareness regarding the risks of early marriage.

SICJHR collaborated as well with Life Foundation in organizing two workshops which resulted in the formation of two groups of young volunteer women who will leading the door-to-door sensitization efforts.

This campaign is framed within the CSO WINS project: “Capacity-building in the Southern Mediterranean to Open policy dialogue and monitoring for Women in Society", funded by the European Union.

For more information you can check the link below.