The House of Representatives' Religious Committee will prepare a draft law regulating verbal divorce in a few days, Amr Hamrouch, secretary of the parliamentary committee, told Youm7.
This comes in response to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's call for a law to tighten divorce procedures for Muslims, during his speech on Tuesday for the Police Day celebration.
"We salute the president on that proposal, which demonstrates his interest in the Egyptian family, its cohesion, and stability," said Hamrouch.
The proposal brings hope to husbands, wives, and children who suffer from serious problems due to separation, he added.
Obliging the husband to issue a formally documented divorce would be much better, and the divorce rate would decline as there will be a chance for the couple to reconcile before the documentation of divorce, Hamrouch added.
He stressed that the new law will be compatible with Islamic Sharia law because it advocates for family unity and stability.
Egyptian law currently grants a Muslim husband the right to divorce his wife in her absence and without her knowledge. He may initiate and conclude all the divorce procedures himself, only letting her know at the final stage.
The president said: "We are a country keen to maintain our society, so we have to issue a law that requires the husband and the wife to be present in person, at the same time, in front of the Ma'zoun (public notary, marriage official) for divorce to take place, thereby enabling the couple to reconsider."
The divorce percentage is high; 40 percent of the 900,000 marriages unions every year end in divorce within five years, Sisi said during a speech he gave at a ceremony marking National Police Day.
Egypt saw about 200,000 divorce cases during 2015, which marks a 10.8 per cent increase in divorces from the previous year, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said last year.
The total number of divorces in 2015 reached 199,867 in comparison with 180,244 cases in 2014, CAPMAS said in its annual report on marriages and divorces.
The CAPMAS said that the figure of 2015 is the highest divorce rate in two decades. The rate reached 2.2 cases per 1,000 people in 2015, which represents an 83 percent rise compared to the beginning of the period 1996-2015, according to the agency.
