[Picture from same article - copyright irinnews.org, 31/1/2013 – Photo: Salah Malkawi/UNHCR]
CAIRO, 31 January 2013 (IRIN) - Lina Al Tiby, a Syrian activist living in Cairo, runs a support network for Syrian women refugees; helps them adapt to life in Egypt; and tries to persuade them not to allow poverty to push them into sex work or unwanted marriage.
Arriving in Egypt with little more than the clothes they are wearing, some Syrian women see marriage as the only means of survival.
"Egyptian men tell Syrian women they will marry them to help them and their families, but… can’t these men help Syrian women without marrying them?" said Al Tiby.
They tell the Syrians that if they marry them they will take care of their needs, a trend encouraged by certain preachers who encourage Egyptian men to marry Syrian refugee women, describing this marriage as a kind of jihad (Arabic). Such statements have been criticized in Egypt: The Egyptian National Council for Women Rights (NCWR) issued a statement this month saying the marriages were “crimes committed against women under the guise of religion” (in Arabic).
