France: The repudiated women of the Republic
Source:
Algerie Ensemble "20 years barakat!"* 40 years is enough.
Original French article by Catherine Simon, circulated by Algerie Ensemble and translated into English by WLUML.
According to Franco-Algerian treaties signed in 1964 after independence of Algeria (1962), any judgement passed in Algeria is applicable to Algerian citizens** living in France. However in 1964, it was 20 years before the revolting Algerian Family Law (known as "Family Code in Algeria, passed in 1984 ***) The application of this 'infamous' law in Algeria should have led the French authorities to question and review its application in France. Our country does not have to and should not apply arbitrary legislations, whether or not to foreign** citizens.
At the very time when in France itself Islamic fundamentalists attempt surreptitiously, through some preaches in mosques, to create a situation that will led to the application of Sharia, it is not tolerable that egalitarian laws be trampled, and that this be done at the time when our legislation aims at more and more equality in rights. The laws of the republic and the principles of equality should be applied to all citizens living in France, regardless of their nationality.
A strange coexistence of French law and the Algerian Family Law (Code de la Famille) allows it: the procedure for repudiation is applicable in France to immigrant women.
Testimonies
Apart from a poster of Mecca, the only photographs that decorate her sitting-room are those of her daughter Sonia's wedding: posing first in her gold embroidered Kabylian traditional attire and second, in her white wedding dress, French style.
In this suburban apartment block of Lyon, which she has never left since her arrival in France 25 years ago, Leila (the name she has chosen for herself), receives her visitors with mint tea and a self-effacing gentle smile. Her own marriage has been a disaster. At 56, this mother is one of thousands of Maghrebian women living in France whose Algerian or Moroccan husbands have chosen to repudiate them using the law of their country of origin, sometimes fraudulently.
"Before personally experiencing the impact of the Algerian Family Code, I didn't think about it. I never imagined that it could destroy my life. That the court over there disposed of me like a dirty rag it's so unjust. I thought I’d be safe here, sighs Leila unwrapping the piles of stamped documents that narrate her personal nightmare in legal jargon. The Algerian Family Code, adopted by the FLN '(National Liberation Front' - the party in power) Parliament and promulgated on June 9th, 1984, in effect makes a woman a legal minor for life, forever under the guardianship of her father, her brothers, or her husband. In an open letter to President Bouteflika, the activists of the collective Vingt Ans Barakat (20 Years, It's Enough), created on the 20th anniversary of this law, point out that under the provisions of this Code, "women cannot marry freely; they do not have the right to divorce; they can be thrown out with their children whenever the husband decides to divorce them; they have the obligations but not the rights needed to raise their children, since they can neither share parental authority nor are they entitled to equal inheritance"."For me personally, it is too late. But if my speaking out can help others", hesitates Leila.
Even though her life as a spouse and mother was not smooth, this woman, now a Lyonnaise, had "never thought of divorce". Married late by Algerian standards, she accepted without protest the marriage "arranged by the two families in 1979". She also accepted to leave for France where her husband, a Franco-Algerian 20 years her senior works as a factory worker (tourneur-adjuster). She also said nothing when her husband cheated on her and gets into the habit of hitting her "even in front of the children".
She reacted in her own way: "I was subordinate to him, so I started wearing the scarf to be subordinate to God", she says. The insults and physical beating didn't stop however, and were soon accompanied by threats of divorce. "He first filed for divorce in the court in Lyon and said I was at fault, says Leila extrapolating an extract of a court document where her husband complained of the "nearly fundamentalist religious lifestyle of his wife", that "prevented the couple from having any social relationship" . Unfortunately for the husband, the Lyon court only partly ruled in his favour: "the judge said it was okay for us to separate, providing that, while waiting for the divorce, he leave the apartment, I retain custody of the children and that he would pay us alimony", continues Leila. Furious at these conditions, the husband stopped the proceedings and left their home. Leila never saw him again. She took off her now pointless scarf. "He used to send a cheque from time to time, that’s all". In the eyes of the French administration, the couple is separated but not divorced.
Three years later, by which time her husband was living with another woman only a few apartment blocks down from his previous home, Leila learns through a telephone call from her mother back home, that a case of repudiation has been initiated there. "I knew nothing, neither about the trip my husband made there, nor about his decision to divorce", remembers Leila. In a few months her life is shaken up again; the Algerian judges have made a decision: accused of having abandoned the conjugal home - supposedly situated in Algeria - she is repudiated without a penny for compensation. Consequently, once the copy of the judgement is registered in France, her alimony is cut off "from one day and the next". Though Algerian, the Family Code still managed to ensnare the Lyonnaise Leila and her French children.
"According to the Franco-Algerian Convention, promulgated in 1964, all rulings passed in Algeria are legally enforceable in France", says her lawyer Ms. Marie-Noelle Frery. In Leila's case, the Algerian divorce document was sent to the authorities in Nantes (the administrative authorities in charge of French citizens born abroad) who automatically register it without the Registrar of Civil Status (Etat Civil) checking the circumstances under which the divorce had been pronounced. Unfortunately, this is what usually happens. Was the spouse summoned to appear? Was this in writing and at the correct address? Was she present at the hearings and if not, was she represented? Clearly, nobody on the French side is ensuring that the minimum conditions, such as a hearing of the two parties, have been fulfilled before registering the judgement.
Despite all her problems, Leila is still not amongst the most unfortunate. Unlike others, she has a ten-year residence permit which is regularly renewed. After long battles, her lawyer succeeded in re-establishing her alimony of 320 Euros per month. While awaiting the day she can maybe convince the French prosecutor and judges to overturn the ruling her husband managed to obtain in Algeria. Her Maghrebian neighbours in her apartment building have turned their back on her. "Amongst Arabs, a divorced woman is viewed negatively. If there's a divorce it's [considered] her fault: she should have been able to keep her husband, to manage, to make do", explains one of her daughters.
In France, this "legal co-habitation" of rights derived from "diverse, even contradictory socio-cultural universes", is increasingly problematic according to university professor Edwige Rude-Antoine. The problem relates notably to the Maghreb countries excepting Tunisia where, since 1956, women enjoy one of the least discriminatory legal statuses in the Muslim world. There are many reasons for the emerging problems. "In 20 years what used to be an immigration of male labour has transformed into structural immigration", says one jurist, researcher of the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), in her book, "Of Life and Families - Immigrants, the Law, and Custom" (Odile Jacob, 1997). According to the last census (1999), Moroccans are the most numerous immigrants (504,096 persons), followed by Algerians (477,482). The Tunisians are far behind (145,356).
These figures obviously exclude all those who have French nationality: Franco-Moroccans, Franco-Algerians, and Franco-Tunisians. However, whether foreigners or bi-nationals, they all live under this delicate "legal co-habitation" between two systems that are frequently in contradiction to each other. For a long time invisible because they were marginalized or occluded, certain supposedly personal tragedies are now in the public eye. "Problems which earlier were solved in the private sphere have erupted onto the public scene: the excessive authority of fathers and husbands, polygamy, repudiation...all these are threats for the migrants, threats which also challenge the foundations of our democracy", adds Edwige Rude-Antoine, one of the rare lawyers in France, along with Francoise Moneger (in Orleans) and Hughes Fulchiron (in Lyon) to have specialized for several years in these questions of international private law. "Five years ago we used to receive one or two requests per month on issues relating to divorce and repudiation", remarks an Algerian feminist activist, Ferial Lalami-Fates, in charge of the Association for Equality, created 15 years ago in Paris. "Today we receive two to three cases a week". Has public opinion changed more rapidly than the laws? "Women born in France are more rebellious, since the scope for autonomy - especially financial - is greater here", suggests Marie-Cecile Rousseau from Nantes, who also feels that "the requests are increasing" concerning problems of adoption and divorce. "There's no standard response", insists the lawyer, "one has to permanently juggle the statutes that are constantly evolving and the situations, each time particular, in order to find the least bad solution".
The legal texts which state the legal "principles" are themselves very complicated and contradictory. Whether it is in Article 3 of the Civil Code (from which the Cassation Court ruled, in a judgement dated April 13, 1932, that any foreign person, whatever her place of residence, are, - definitely when it is a matter of personal status, i.e. rules concerning marriage and divorce -, ruled by the legislation of their country of nationality) or in Article 310 of the same Civil Code (which states that, in matters of divorce, French law should be applied to the spouses, even of foreign nationality, who have their residence on French soil), whether it is the Franco-Moroccan Convention dated August 10, 1981 (which states that divorce of Moroccan spouses is established according to Moroccan law, even if the couple has its residence in France) or of Article 5 of Protocole 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights ( which states the principle of equality of rights of spouses during their marriage and at the time of its dissolution), only scholars and initiates can hope to find their way through this tangle ! Even more so that, to each of these legislative texts that state "principles", one can oppose a law of exception.... While actively working towards the abolition of the Algerian Family Code that is the source of so much evil on each side of the Mediterranean sea, the Nantaise**** Zahia Belhamiti, President of the local organisation of Algerian women (ALFA), has no illusion: " In our countries of origin, tradition and customs always supersede the law. Even if this law give them some protection, many women of Maghrebian descent have no means to claim its application to their cases - either because they are financially deprived, or because they lack human support".
This law, obviously, is not the only source of such situations.
"For second or third-generation immigrants, those born and brought up in France, having to cross the Mediterranean to attend to a legal case, is an aberration", underlines the Parisian Hakima Hafdane, president of the Franco-Moroccan Association for Access to Rights and Citizenship. "Relying on French law or Moroccan law should be a choice", she adds, "because in these matters, the issues are more about social identity than law". This is not far from the view of the lawyer, Edwige Rude-Antoine, when she suggests the need to consider the possibility of a "right to choose"’ that could be offered to foreigners and bi-nationals, "maybe at the time of marriage"?
"Unfortunately, in choosing French law, many women will believe that they are betraying Islam", comments Nadia, 23, a student in Nantes. In contrast to Leila, who is old enough to be her mother, Nadia, who has a degree in Commerce, married "for love" in Algiers with a "modern, charming, very enlightened" Algerian. It's also "for love"’ that she followed him to France. Ironically enough, liberal pretense oblige, it is Nadia's husband who helped his young wife discover the 'Simone-de-Beauvoir Center", a feminist place in Nantes, where ALFA holds its meetings. But his true colours were quickly revealed. This Prince Charming was unemployed and ended up admitting having been married and divorced twice before. Nadia does not escape repudiation either. The fact that she luckily filed for divorce in Nantes before her husband filed in Algiers, is a double-edged sword. "It is not in my interest to get a very rapid divorce: my residence permit is linked to my marriage", explains the young woman. As for the idea of returning to Algiers, there's no question, "Here my status is precarious, but there I am condemned: whether I live alone or return to my father's home, I will be a pariah. In our country, a divorcee rhymes with prostitute".
by Catherine Simon
All notes below (preceded with *) are from the translator.
NOTES
* This is the name of a new organisation that demands the repeal of the Family Law passed in May 1984 in Algeria, i.e. 20 years ago. 'Barakat' means 'enough!'
** Please note that French citizens of Algerian origin (even 2nd and 3rd generation from migrant families) are still considered Algeria citizens by Algeria, even if they have never set foot in Algeria, nor held an Algerian passport, nor want this passport or nationality. Citizenship is thus determined by blood and descent and forcibly imposed to people who do not want it. France does not defend such 'French citizens' when they are put under Algerian legislation. Diplomacy obliges...
*** Explanation added in parenthesis by the translator.
**** Inhabitant of the city of Nantes in France.
At the very time when in France itself Islamic fundamentalists attempt surreptitiously, through some preaches in mosques, to create a situation that will led to the application of Sharia, it is not tolerable that egalitarian laws be trampled, and that this be done at the time when our legislation aims at more and more equality in rights. The laws of the republic and the principles of equality should be applied to all citizens living in France, regardless of their nationality.
A strange coexistence of French law and the Algerian Family Law (Code de la Famille) allows it: the procedure for repudiation is applicable in France to immigrant women.
Testimonies
Apart from a poster of Mecca, the only photographs that decorate her sitting-room are those of her daughter Sonia's wedding: posing first in her gold embroidered Kabylian traditional attire and second, in her white wedding dress, French style.
In this suburban apartment block of Lyon, which she has never left since her arrival in France 25 years ago, Leila (the name she has chosen for herself), receives her visitors with mint tea and a self-effacing gentle smile. Her own marriage has been a disaster. At 56, this mother is one of thousands of Maghrebian women living in France whose Algerian or Moroccan husbands have chosen to repudiate them using the law of their country of origin, sometimes fraudulently.
"Before personally experiencing the impact of the Algerian Family Code, I didn't think about it. I never imagined that it could destroy my life. That the court over there disposed of me like a dirty rag it's so unjust. I thought I’d be safe here, sighs Leila unwrapping the piles of stamped documents that narrate her personal nightmare in legal jargon. The Algerian Family Code, adopted by the FLN '(National Liberation Front' - the party in power) Parliament and promulgated on June 9th, 1984, in effect makes a woman a legal minor for life, forever under the guardianship of her father, her brothers, or her husband. In an open letter to President Bouteflika, the activists of the collective Vingt Ans Barakat (20 Years, It's Enough), created on the 20th anniversary of this law, point out that under the provisions of this Code, "women cannot marry freely; they do not have the right to divorce; they can be thrown out with their children whenever the husband decides to divorce them; they have the obligations but not the rights needed to raise their children, since they can neither share parental authority nor are they entitled to equal inheritance"."For me personally, it is too late. But if my speaking out can help others", hesitates Leila.
Even though her life as a spouse and mother was not smooth, this woman, now a Lyonnaise, had "never thought of divorce". Married late by Algerian standards, she accepted without protest the marriage "arranged by the two families in 1979". She also accepted to leave for France where her husband, a Franco-Algerian 20 years her senior works as a factory worker (tourneur-adjuster). She also said nothing when her husband cheated on her and gets into the habit of hitting her "even in front of the children".
She reacted in her own way: "I was subordinate to him, so I started wearing the scarf to be subordinate to God", she says. The insults and physical beating didn't stop however, and were soon accompanied by threats of divorce. "He first filed for divorce in the court in Lyon and said I was at fault, says Leila extrapolating an extract of a court document where her husband complained of the "nearly fundamentalist religious lifestyle of his wife", that "prevented the couple from having any social relationship" . Unfortunately for the husband, the Lyon court only partly ruled in his favour: "the judge said it was okay for us to separate, providing that, while waiting for the divorce, he leave the apartment, I retain custody of the children and that he would pay us alimony", continues Leila. Furious at these conditions, the husband stopped the proceedings and left their home. Leila never saw him again. She took off her now pointless scarf. "He used to send a cheque from time to time, that’s all". In the eyes of the French administration, the couple is separated but not divorced.
Three years later, by which time her husband was living with another woman only a few apartment blocks down from his previous home, Leila learns through a telephone call from her mother back home, that a case of repudiation has been initiated there. "I knew nothing, neither about the trip my husband made there, nor about his decision to divorce", remembers Leila. In a few months her life is shaken up again; the Algerian judges have made a decision: accused of having abandoned the conjugal home - supposedly situated in Algeria - she is repudiated without a penny for compensation. Consequently, once the copy of the judgement is registered in France, her alimony is cut off "from one day and the next". Though Algerian, the Family Code still managed to ensnare the Lyonnaise Leila and her French children.
"According to the Franco-Algerian Convention, promulgated in 1964, all rulings passed in Algeria are legally enforceable in France", says her lawyer Ms. Marie-Noelle Frery. In Leila's case, the Algerian divorce document was sent to the authorities in Nantes (the administrative authorities in charge of French citizens born abroad) who automatically register it without the Registrar of Civil Status (Etat Civil) checking the circumstances under which the divorce had been pronounced. Unfortunately, this is what usually happens. Was the spouse summoned to appear? Was this in writing and at the correct address? Was she present at the hearings and if not, was she represented? Clearly, nobody on the French side is ensuring that the minimum conditions, such as a hearing of the two parties, have been fulfilled before registering the judgement.
Despite all her problems, Leila is still not amongst the most unfortunate. Unlike others, she has a ten-year residence permit which is regularly renewed. After long battles, her lawyer succeeded in re-establishing her alimony of 320 Euros per month. While awaiting the day she can maybe convince the French prosecutor and judges to overturn the ruling her husband managed to obtain in Algeria. Her Maghrebian neighbours in her apartment building have turned their back on her. "Amongst Arabs, a divorced woman is viewed negatively. If there's a divorce it's [considered] her fault: she should have been able to keep her husband, to manage, to make do", explains one of her daughters.
In France, this "legal co-habitation" of rights derived from "diverse, even contradictory socio-cultural universes", is increasingly problematic according to university professor Edwige Rude-Antoine. The problem relates notably to the Maghreb countries excepting Tunisia where, since 1956, women enjoy one of the least discriminatory legal statuses in the Muslim world. There are many reasons for the emerging problems. "In 20 years what used to be an immigration of male labour has transformed into structural immigration", says one jurist, researcher of the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), in her book, "Of Life and Families - Immigrants, the Law, and Custom" (Odile Jacob, 1997). According to the last census (1999), Moroccans are the most numerous immigrants (504,096 persons), followed by Algerians (477,482). The Tunisians are far behind (145,356).
These figures obviously exclude all those who have French nationality: Franco-Moroccans, Franco-Algerians, and Franco-Tunisians. However, whether foreigners or bi-nationals, they all live under this delicate "legal co-habitation" between two systems that are frequently in contradiction to each other. For a long time invisible because they were marginalized or occluded, certain supposedly personal tragedies are now in the public eye. "Problems which earlier were solved in the private sphere have erupted onto the public scene: the excessive authority of fathers and husbands, polygamy, repudiation...all these are threats for the migrants, threats which also challenge the foundations of our democracy", adds Edwige Rude-Antoine, one of the rare lawyers in France, along with Francoise Moneger (in Orleans) and Hughes Fulchiron (in Lyon) to have specialized for several years in these questions of international private law. "Five years ago we used to receive one or two requests per month on issues relating to divorce and repudiation", remarks an Algerian feminist activist, Ferial Lalami-Fates, in charge of the Association for Equality, created 15 years ago in Paris. "Today we receive two to three cases a week". Has public opinion changed more rapidly than the laws? "Women born in France are more rebellious, since the scope for autonomy - especially financial - is greater here", suggests Marie-Cecile Rousseau from Nantes, who also feels that "the requests are increasing" concerning problems of adoption and divorce. "There's no standard response", insists the lawyer, "one has to permanently juggle the statutes that are constantly evolving and the situations, each time particular, in order to find the least bad solution".
The legal texts which state the legal "principles" are themselves very complicated and contradictory. Whether it is in Article 3 of the Civil Code (from which the Cassation Court ruled, in a judgement dated April 13, 1932, that any foreign person, whatever her place of residence, are, - definitely when it is a matter of personal status, i.e. rules concerning marriage and divorce -, ruled by the legislation of their country of nationality) or in Article 310 of the same Civil Code (which states that, in matters of divorce, French law should be applied to the spouses, even of foreign nationality, who have their residence on French soil), whether it is the Franco-Moroccan Convention dated August 10, 1981 (which states that divorce of Moroccan spouses is established according to Moroccan law, even if the couple has its residence in France) or of Article 5 of Protocole 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights ( which states the principle of equality of rights of spouses during their marriage and at the time of its dissolution), only scholars and initiates can hope to find their way through this tangle ! Even more so that, to each of these legislative texts that state "principles", one can oppose a law of exception.... While actively working towards the abolition of the Algerian Family Code that is the source of so much evil on each side of the Mediterranean sea, the Nantaise**** Zahia Belhamiti, President of the local organisation of Algerian women (ALFA), has no illusion: " In our countries of origin, tradition and customs always supersede the law. Even if this law give them some protection, many women of Maghrebian descent have no means to claim its application to their cases - either because they are financially deprived, or because they lack human support".
This law, obviously, is not the only source of such situations.
"For second or third-generation immigrants, those born and brought up in France, having to cross the Mediterranean to attend to a legal case, is an aberration", underlines the Parisian Hakima Hafdane, president of the Franco-Moroccan Association for Access to Rights and Citizenship. "Relying on French law or Moroccan law should be a choice", she adds, "because in these matters, the issues are more about social identity than law". This is not far from the view of the lawyer, Edwige Rude-Antoine, when she suggests the need to consider the possibility of a "right to choose"’ that could be offered to foreigners and bi-nationals, "maybe at the time of marriage"?
"Unfortunately, in choosing French law, many women will believe that they are betraying Islam", comments Nadia, 23, a student in Nantes. In contrast to Leila, who is old enough to be her mother, Nadia, who has a degree in Commerce, married "for love" in Algiers with a "modern, charming, very enlightened" Algerian. It's also "for love"’ that she followed him to France. Ironically enough, liberal pretense oblige, it is Nadia's husband who helped his young wife discover the 'Simone-de-Beauvoir Center", a feminist place in Nantes, where ALFA holds its meetings. But his true colours were quickly revealed. This Prince Charming was unemployed and ended up admitting having been married and divorced twice before. Nadia does not escape repudiation either. The fact that she luckily filed for divorce in Nantes before her husband filed in Algiers, is a double-edged sword. "It is not in my interest to get a very rapid divorce: my residence permit is linked to my marriage", explains the young woman. As for the idea of returning to Algiers, there's no question, "Here my status is precarious, but there I am condemned: whether I live alone or return to my father's home, I will be a pariah. In our country, a divorcee rhymes with prostitute".
by Catherine Simon
All notes below (preceded with *) are from the translator.
NOTES
* This is the name of a new organisation that demands the repeal of the Family Law passed in May 1984 in Algeria, i.e. 20 years ago. 'Barakat' means 'enough!'
** Please note that French citizens of Algerian origin (even 2nd and 3rd generation from migrant families) are still considered Algeria citizens by Algeria, even if they have never set foot in Algeria, nor held an Algerian passport, nor want this passport or nationality. Citizenship is thus determined by blood and descent and forcibly imposed to people who do not want it. France does not defend such 'French citizens' when they are put under Algerian legislation. Diplomacy obliges...
*** Explanation added in parenthesis by the translator.
**** Inhabitant of the city of Nantes in France.
