Sexual harassment may have been criminalized in the country since 2014, however, that doesn’t mean issues of harassment cannot be found on the streets of Egypt. To counteract several recent reports of women receiving unwanted attention in public, Egypt’s highest religious authority has released a statement detailing that all forms of harassment are “a forbidden act.”
In a series of tweets, the Al-Azhar Institute asserted that “criminalizing harassment must be absolute regardless of the context or conditions.” It added, “Blaming harassment on a woman’s clothing or behavior is a wrong way of thinking. Harassment is an attack on a woman’s privacy as well as her dignity and freedom. This appalling phenomenon also leads to the loss of the sense of security.”
According to a report released last year by UN Women and Promundo, 60% of women in the North African country said that they had experienced some form of sexual harassment. In the same poll, 75% of men and 84% of women surveyed said women who “dress provocatively deserve to be harassed,” Al Arabiya reports. Egypt criminalized sexual harassment in 2014, with the nation’s then acting president, Adly Mansour, issuing a decree that offenders could be punished with a minimum of six months in jail, and a fine of 3,000 Egyptian pounds.
Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco are other countries in the region that have introduced provisions criminalizing sexual harassment in recent years.
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