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Egypt’s Divorce Rate Is Skyrocketing. The Government Wants To Make Alimony Insurance Mandatory

Egypt’s Divorce Rate Is Skyrocketing. The Government Wants To Make Alimony Insurance Mandatory

divorce rate
The divorce rate in Egypt is staggeringly high with 40 percent of couples ending their marriages. Image by Kordas via Wikimedia Commons

Egyptian authorities want to make divorce insurance mandatory for all men planning to get married to mitigate the financial impact of the country’s skyrocketing divorce rate.

The North African country has one of the world’s highest divorce rates. More than 40 percent of Egyptian couples break their union compared to 7 percent five decades ago, according to a 2017 report issued by Egypt’s Cabinet Information Centre.

The Egyptian parliament wants to introduce the divorce insurance law by the end of 2019, according to OZY. This is expected to ensure that men can pay alimony to their ex-wives in the event of a divorce, regardless of their financial situation.

“This amendment … will put some divorced men in a tight corner,” Cairo-based lawyer Sabry Abdel Kawy told OZY.

Measures to curb the divorce rate

Divorce is so common in Egypt that one regional governor decided to regulate closing times for cafes as a measure aimed at reducing the divorce rate.

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In 2018 alone, the number of Egyptian divorces rose 7 percent to 211,500, according to the state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.

The marriage rate fell from slightly more than 10 per thousand to nine in 2018.

The divorce rate is expected to grow by double digits in 2019, based on partial data released in March.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has banned the practice of verbal divorce, where a man can simply end a marriage by telling his wife that it’s over between them using a specific phrase. El-Sisi termed the practice as unfair to women.

El-Sisi’s government also introduced “love and marriage lessons” for university students in an attempt to curb divorce, according to a Reuters report.