Pregnancy punishment lessened

2005-01-27 15:07

Ali Sultan

Zanzibar - Parliament has amended a 20-year-old law to reduce the punishment unmarried women face for becoming pregnant from two years to six months and for the first time propose sentences for the fathers.

Zanzibar's 59-member House of Representatives voted 50-0 late on Wednesday in favour of the amendments to the 1985 Spinsters, Widow and Female Divorcee Protection Act. Nine lawmakers were absent when the legislature voted on the amendments.

Health and Social Welfare Minister Salim Juma Othman told members before they voted on the law that, "the government has decided to come up with the new law aimed at upholding women rights."

He denied that the law would encourage promiscuity and premarital sex, arguing that the changes just made Zanzibari law more internationally acceptable.

Changes to the law are, "not enough, but they are a step forward to what we are looking for, after years of lobbying and trying to convince political powers," to improve women's rights in the Tanzanian archipelago, said Shifaa Said, a women's rights activist.

She said the amended law for the first time says men who impregnate unmarried women will be punished, but leaves the details of the punishment to out-of-court settlements between the men's and women's families.

Zanzibar, which united with Tanganyika in 1964 after a violent upheaval to form the United Republic of Tanzania, retains some autonomy, with its own president and legislature. - AP

- SAPA