Syrian women, children refugees attend free legal awareness session in Mafraq

AMMAN — “The ignorance of basic legal procedures might put refugees at risk of prosecution or financial penalties,” stressed lawyer Salem Al Mefleh, the Adaleh Legal Aid Unit director, as he gave a lecture to some 40 Syrian refugees on the most important legal issues in Jordan on Thursday.

Organised by Adaleh in Mafraq Governorate, some 80km north of Amman, the session targeted women and children refugees with a special focus on issues related to underage marriage, domestic violence, issuance of birth certificates and documenting marriage and divorce contracts, a statement by Adaleh said.

“Ignoring procedures that are as simple as issuing a birth certificate of a child might put him at risk of being nationless in the future,” explained the lawyer, who also noted the importance of such official documents in granting their children rights to access other services such as health and education.

Mefleh cited several problems resulting from divorce or the issuance of marriage contracts through sheikhs only, without documenting them in the court, which he said is “a common practice in Syria” that conflicts with Jordanian laws, according to the statement.

“We had a case in which a woman was criminalised for getting married to two men because she got divorced without documenting her divorce in the court,” Mefleh explained.

He also spoke of cases in which wives were less than 15, explaining that the legal age of marriage in Jordan is 18, with exceptions granted for marriages in which at leastone of the people involved is between the ages of 15 and 18 upon the Sharia judge‘s approval.  

The session, ninth of a series under a year-long project funded by the Spanish International Cooperation for Development Agency (AECID), aims to raise refugees’ awareness and offer them free legal consultations and services, the statement read. 

“Awareness sessions are a very important tool to let our beneficiaries know that they must fulfil obligations and they do also have rights under the same laws, with people out there, like social workers, doctors and lawyers, who are ready to help them,” AECID project manager, Isidro Garcia Mingo, said.

Regarding domestic violence, a main topic for the awareness sessions targeting women refugees, Garcia stressed: “No woman or child should ever suffer interpersonal violence under any circumstance.”

“It is especially sinister and vile when perpetrators are members of the victim’s family or their closest circle, when violence enters the intimate space of home, when the reasons behind violence include a discriminatory and patrimonial vision of human relationships,” he added.

Since the project was launched in November 2017, around 500 Syrian refugees have attended the awareness sessions, with 310 of them having been offered free legal consultations and services provided by three lawyers recruited to file cases for the refugees without any fees.

Established in 2014, the Mafraq Adaleh Legal Aid Unit is part of the Adaleh Centre for Human Rights Studies, a non-governmental organisation that aims at enforcing human rights, democracy, and justice in Jordan and the Arab world through building the capacity of NGOs and the involved parties, the statement concluded.