Syrian migrants wives revolt against husbands, family bonds at risk

Translation by Yusra Ahmed

(Zamanl Al Wasl- Eqtsad)- Many Syrian families have suffered after reaching to Europe from social and familial difficulties, especially when women got benefits of the European law which is more supportive to women and gives them priority in managing the family and the financial issues.

Some women divorced their husbands, while others used the law to revenge from the unfairness they were under while they were living in Syria.

Ahmed, who lived in Jordan and circumstances forced him to send his wife to Sweden paying all he owned in order to reach there and proceed the reunion for him as a husband.

However, she applied for asylum as a divorced woman and when he managed to illegally reach there, she refused to let him in her house and claimed that he would insult her and her kids, who are his as well.

Ali, only few months after arriving to Netherlands with his family, he was surprised to be told by the Dutch Authority that his wife wanted divorce. While Bassam who lives France, his wife seize his salary and threatened him of divorce if he objected.

More and more stories reflecting embarrassing marital conflict and disputes on salary and accusation of dishonesty. Moreover, women started to face their husbands with the fact that they have no power over them as the country is responsible for their cost of living.

In front of these changes, we need to ask ourselves about reasons behind those changes, and if the social and traditional values we as Syrian and Arab were raised on fit with those practices or they are new themes in our culture.

For these queries, we need the opinion of specialists in this field.

We talked to Dr. Zeriaf. M, an academic and specialist in the affairs of Education and bringing up, she said: “we were brought up in a community where the woman even if she works, she does not not have financial independency and stay connected to the husband emotionally and financially, in fact there is no clarity in the rights of financial rights and duties, therefore, even if the woman works, she still under the husband's power, that gives a sense of humiliation. For example, if she needed o buy something for herself, she needed to take it from what left from her salary”.

She added that the husband in our country is financially unable to cover all the material and family expense, therefore, he relies the wife's salary and sort of seizes her salary and effort to the family. Therefore, when Syrian women went to Europe, they found that the financial allowances are independent beside the relative abundance because lots of duties and expenses are covered by the government . All these changes reflected in expressing the need to control relying on the power of money and separating each one's allowances, and some cases unfortunately reached to courts.

The point of view of Dr. Zeriaf in this regard is that the father and mother who decide to go to court or police or any institute outside the marital home, they do not have clear view of their financial and emotional responsibilities toward the family and their relationship as a husband and a wife, or a father and a mother, and that would cause a rift in the family and affect its bonds.

The Social specialist believes that family ties of the Syrians in Europe are threatened, due to "fault in our understanding of rights and duties, because we basically do not clearly have a culture of rights and duties.”

She noted that she is not in favor of interference within the family by external power because it will lead to the end of the familial institution.