Date: July 28, 2016

The Center for Women’s Legal Researches, Counselling and Protection (CWLRCP) launched a campaign in the Gaza Strip for the first time entitled, “Establishing a Joint Property System Between Spouses,” funded by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation. Through this campaign, the Center aims to empower married women to equally share movable and unmovable assets acquired during the marriage.

During a community meeting held this morning, which brought together a number of women’s, community, and human rights organizations, as well as lawyers, Ms. Zeinab Al-Ghneimi, Director of the Center, emphasized that the Center seeks, through this campaign, to exert pressure on decision-makers to establish a joint property system for assets acquired after marriage. This system would automatically guarantee the wife’s right to share the assets after the marriage. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to contribute to raising community awareness, especially among young people.

She called on women to declare their position on their right to own movable and unmovable assets by signing a petition demanding their rights to own family assets equally with men. To achieve this goal, (20) workshops will be implemented by a number of lawyers capable of carrying out a legal and community awareness campaign regarding women’s right to property ownership.

Al-Ghneimi pointed out that this campaign came about due to the increasing phenomenon of economic violence in the Gaza Strip, especially after the 2014 war, including attacks on women’s financial rights, including real estate and movable assets that they had contributed to from work income or inheritance shares. This leads to widening family disputes between spouses, which ultimately leads to divorce.

She noted that the Legal Counseling Unit was unable to do justice for women visiting them due to the absence of clear and explicit legal texts that stipulate the wife’s right to assets realized and acquired during the marriage.

She presented the joint property system that the Center is advocating for during the campaign, stressing that it is an optional system that spouses may choose when concluding the marriage contract or at a later date. It aims to make real estate or a number of properties or movable assets jointly owned by the spouses whenever they are related to the family, in addition to the fact that it does not affect the rules of inheritance.

For her part, Ms. Islah Hassaniya, a member of the Board of Directors at the Center for Women’s Legal Researches, emphasized the need to implement a system of equal joint property between spouses after marriage as a law in Sharia and civil courts to preserve women’s rights, speaking about the suffering of women in the courts where they are divorced without any financial rights.

The attendees presented a number of recommendations related to the system in a way that serves the interests of women.