House approves bill to toughen sexual harassment penalties

Parliament approved a bill on Sunday that will impose tougher penalties, including longer prison sentences and stiffer fines, on perpetrators of sexual harassment. The bill now goes to the State Council for a final review before its passage into law.

The bill, which amends existing articles on sexual harassment in the Penal Code, classifies sexual harassment as a felony, rather than a misdemeanor, and those convicted of it face up to five years in prison, as opposed to the previous maximum of six months. Fines will also range between LE200,000 to LE300,00 instead of the previous range of LE3,000 to LE5,000. The bill also aims to make sentences harsher for people abusing positions of power in order to harass someone, for using blackmail or threat of force, and in instances where there is more than one perpetrator — with prison sentences of two to five years increased up to a minimum of seven, and from LE20,000 to LE50,000 up to LE300,000 to LE500,000.

The bill’s speedy passage through the legislature —  going from a proposal, to preliminary approval to the committee review stage in just over two weeks — drew praise from the National Council for Women.

Yet, Aziza al-Taweel, a lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights who works on gender-based violence cases, said that while there are positive aspects to the bill, it does not deal with the broader problems surrounding harassment cases that can discourage victims from coming forward for fear of being targeted themselves by the legal system.

The bill comes on the heels of several highly publicized sexual harassment cases, including a recent incident perpetrated by an official at Cairo International Airport, amid a renewed surge in activism on the issue after massive social media campaigns last summer brought greater attention to the ubiquity of harassment and assault. These included the case of Ahmed Bassam Zaki who was convicted on harassment charges in December, as well as an investigation into the 2014 gang rape incident at the Fairmont Nile City hotel, which saw witnesses detained for five months and ultimately resulted in the acquittal of all six detained suspects on the basis of insufficient evidence.

According to Taweel, the new and tougher sentences fail to address outstanding issues in enforcement and procedure, as well as the way the police, Public Prosecution, and courts handle harassment claims from the point of reporting, to investigation and through to trial.

Making sexual harassment a felony will also complicate the legal process that victims of harassment have to go through, said Taweel, adding that trials and investigations in felony cases are usually a more prolonged process.

“Toughening the sentences won’t change a thing in the [legal] framework unless there are direct instructions to remove the obstacles preventing reporting and to ease requirements for the burden of proof,” Taweel said

Taweel added that tougher sentences could lead to a backlash against victims who come forward by offenders or their families, a major issue according to several feminist and women rights groups with several incidents of reprisal assaults recorded over the last few years.

The new bill was introduced into the  House of Representatives on June 24 by the majority-holding Nation’s Future Party, a few days after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi publicly addressed the issue of sexual harassment in a speech at the Armed Forces Academy.

“Can anyone dare to even look at our girls and women? There are no men now, are there?... I swear, I swear to god, very soon there will be a day when whoever takes a look at [women], we will take [detain] him via the law… How is it that a girl can walk in the street feeling unsafe! ... You talk to me about human rights and our girls are treated in the street like this?!,” said the president.

The new bill is now with the State Council for review, and will later be returned to the House for a final seal of approval before it is sent to the president to be signed into law.