BEIRUT: Women's rights activists said Tuesday that MPs tasked with drafting a law to protect women from domestic violence themselves require lessons about sexual harassment.
This comes after a media report alleged misogynistic behavior toward female journalists on the part of MPs involved in drafting the law.
Nasawiya, a women's rights group, responded to the report by urging the Press Syndicate to defend the rights of workers, particularly women, against sexual harassment in the workplace.
“Women's groups in Lebanon are active in the community to raise awareness regarding sexual harassment, but they never thought they should have started with the MPs themselves. It is clear that they are in need of major lessons,” Nasawiya said in a statement.
On Jan. 27, Al-Akhbar newspaper published an article detailing how MPs, including those on the committee tasked with implementing a draft law to protect women against domestic violence, verbally and physically harass female journalists.
“We urge the Press Syndicate, charged primarily with defending the rights of workers, to act quickly and investigate the matter and protect female journalists from harassment, which is considered the most repressive of tools against women and is seen as an impediment to their advancement."
The Parliamentary committee studying the law consists of eight MPs, seven men and one woman, representing a variety of political parties.
“How could those who engage in sexual harassment ... be entrusted with protecting [women] from such violence?” the Nasawiya statement asked. Yet despite its misgivings about the MPs, Nasawiya urged the government to immediately promulgate a law against sexual harassment in the workplace and the home.
Meanwhile, Zahle MP Shant Janjanian, who is a member of the committee preparing the bill, criticized the article in Al-Akhbar, claiming that it contains inappropriate language and that it should not have generalized about MPs in the committee.
“There was some inappropriate content in the story … which actually made me stop reading,” Janjanian told The Daily Star.
He added that even if some MPs are corrupt, the article should not imply that all of them are.
“Some papers and particularly some journalists like publishing scandals or making up stories so as to grab the spotlight,” he said, adding that such attacks against MPs were not acceptable.
The original Al-Akhbar story can be found
here