The Double Edged Law on Protection of Women and
Family Members from Domestic Violence

Chucri Serhan

University of Balamand
April 2015

Presented to Dr. Mida Zantout
Domestic violence has always been a serious underlying social and cultural problem plaguing the Lebanese society, negatively impacting women. After years of cases coming out to the public and simply dismissed by superiors and forgotten; KAFA, a women rights NGO, wrote a draft for a new domestic violence law in 2007 that was submitted to the parliament in 2010. By the time the PWDV Law was finally passed by the Lebanese parliament on April 1, 2014, it had undergone serious changes passing through the government channels. It went from a draft being written for the purpose of protecting women’s rights to a law protecting all the members of the family. So what are the reasons behind this transformation and how much is this new law protecting the women suffering from domestic violence?
Domestic violence is the act of a person committing violence towards or abusing a family member within the home and in most cases is suffered by women. There are no national statistics for the rate of domestic violence in Lebanon, but campaigners say that at least one woman is killed by her husband on a monthly average and thousands are subjected to verbal and physical abuse per year (BBC News, 2014). Lebanon is considered one of the most liberal countries in the Middle East but until the passage of “The Law on Protection of Women and Family Members from Domestic Violence”, there had been no law on domestic violence. KAFA, the organization that wrote the draft, is a feminist, Lebanese, non-profit, civil society organization that seeks to nullify patriarchal structures that discriminate against women. The introduction of this law, by itself, is a big step in the improvement of women’s rights in the country. The new