Awareness Session on Divorce

ACCTS Irbid Community Center (ICC) conducted an awareness lecture on divorce to raise awareness of women from the local community and Syrian refugees.

15 February 2020

Irbid, Jordan (ACCTS/ICC) - ICC conducted an awareness lecture on divorce in cooperation with The Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development. The awareness workshop targeted women from the local community and Syrian refugees. The lecture tackled the causes of divorce and its negative impacts on the family members in particular on society in general. Sixty-six women attended the session.

There has been much talk going on about the issue of divorce recently. It has become widespread, and one of the issues that our society is discussing. It is becoming more apparent, and we heard about many cases. Divorce is an intense shock that causes a rift and a crack in the entity of the family, which is an essential component of society. Consequently, divorce does not only affect the spouses negatively but also the family, children, and society as a whole.

Jordan, Middle East, News published the following related article on January 25, 2019:  

The 2017 annual statistical report issued by the Jordanian Department of Statistics revealed that one out of five Jordanian women who married in 2017 had already been married before, compared to one in every four men.

According to the report, 80.9 percent of women (62,860 women) married for the first time, compared to 76.5 percent of males (59,449 men).

This leap is the result of the latest increase of divorce rates in Jordan, which prompted the Iftaa’ Department to issue a fatwa mid-last year, allowing divorced women and widows to remarry again, according to a statement issued on Tuesday by the Sisterhood Is Global Institute/ Jordan (SIGI).

The percentage of divorced women who had married for the second time in 2017 increased by 2.4 percent compared to 2016.

Some 13,677 female divorcees got married in 2017, representing 17.6 percent of the total number of women who married during the same year (77,700 marriage contracts), compared to the marriage of 12,353 divorcees, 15.2 percent, in 2016.

Statistics revealed that 65.8 percent of divorcees, who married for the second time in 2017, were below 29 years of age, and they are 9,008 women, 567 of whom were under the age of 18.

The number of male widows who married in 2017 amounted to 1,107, compared to 1,163 female widows.

SIGI pointed out that divorcees are suffering from stigma and societal culture that considers divorced women as inferior and do not respect their humanity and needs. The association insisted that the high rate of divorce among minors is an inevitable result of early marriage, which has negative consequences on education and health, in addition to wasting the girls’ talents and limiting their freedom and ability to make choices that affect their overall lives.