In marriages across MENA, consent is fictional and rape is legal

Across the MENA, women are being raped by their husbands, and the law looks the other way. In many cases, survivors who seek help are told by police, prosecutors, or even judges that what happened to them isn’t a crime - it's marriage.

This state-sanctioned impunity is at the core of a new report, In Search of Justice: Rape Laws in Arab States, by Equality Now that exposes the legal vacuum surrounding rape, especially within marriage. Across the 22 members of the League of Arab States (LAS), not a single country criminalises marital rape.

This legal gap reflects a deeper problem: the failure to define rape based on consent. Instead, most rape laws rely on outdated notions of force, coercion, and public morality. The result is that survivors are not only denied justice, they are often punished for coming forward.

Consent is missing in rape laws

Globally, human rights bodies agree that rape is about a lack of consent, not just physical violence. International treaties such as The Rome Statute and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), along with multiple international court rulings, all affirm that sexual activity must be freely chosen, fully understood, and given without any form of coercion or pressure. Anything less is a violation of bodily autonomy and human dignity.

Yet across the region, national laws fall far short of this standard. Most still define rape narrowly. In some contexts, laws refer vaguely to an “assault on honour” or “indecent acts,” reinforcing social stigma instead of legal protection.

This failure to centre consent means many forms of coercion - emotional, psychological, or economic - go unrecognised. Survivors are required to provide evidence of physical injury.

In many countries, they are also expected to demonstrate sexual “modesty,” a deeply ingrained notion in several LAS legal systems that judges women’s credibility based on their perceived chastity or moral conduct.

This concept often seeps into courtroom attitudes and judgments. In many Arab States, women who do not conform to conservative expectations of behaviour, dress, or reputation are often presumed “less credible” or morally culpable, making them less likely to receive protection or justice.

Survivors may be subjected to degrading virginity tests, invasive questioning about their sexual history, or forced to recount intimate details in courtrooms that routinely privilege family honour over individual rights.

Judges and prosecutors may dismiss cases as private disputes, reflecting entrenched social norms that view women’s bodies as regulated by family and community rather than protected by the law. In practice, this means that the legal system often shields perpetrators while compounding the trauma for victims, reinforcing a culture of impunity across the region.

 

 

 

 

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A legal black hole

The denial of consent reaches its peak within marriage. In many LAS countries, including Jordan, Syria, Palestine (West Bank), and Egypt, the law either explicitly excludes marital rape or interprets marriage as blanket consent to sex.

In countries like Somalia and Yemen, family laws even require wives to “obey” their husbands and submit to sex on demand.

Equality Now’s research documents how these legal frameworks operate in practice. Survivors of marital rape are routinely turned away from police stations or discouraged from filing complaints. Where cases do reach court, judges often treat rape as a private dispute or as a lesser “harm” rather than a serious crime.

This unequal treatment is not just unjust; it is dangerous. The fact that rape within marriage is either ignored or punished far less severely than rape outside marriage, signals that women’s bodies are treated as the property of their husbands, and that sexual violence in the home is considered less serious than violence in public.

Patriarchal family laws enable impunity

Marital rape doesn’t occur in isolation. It is enabled and normalised by a broader legal system that disempowers women from childhood through adulthood. Family laws in Arab states often restrict women’s right to divorce, to move freely, or to retain custody of their children.

Spousal obedience clauses, male guardianship, and discriminatory personal status laws reinforce systemic gender inequality, signalling that women’s rights and autonomy are treated as secondary to men’s under the law.

Child marriage compounds the crisis. In several Arab countries, judges may allow girls under 18 to marry with guardian approval, effectively legalising child rape. Once married, these girls are often subjected to sexual violence without any legal protection.

The situation is even more precarious for stateless, migrant, and refugee women, who often lack legal standing altogether. Their ability to report rape, marital or otherwise, is shaped by fear of deportation, lack of documentation, or exclusion from justice systems entirely.

Despite these barriers, women across the region are rising to demand change. Several civil society organisations and groups, such as KAFA (enough) Violence and Exploitation and the Hurra Coalition – a regional movement of human rights lawyers, survivor-advocates, and grassroots women’s rights organisations - are pushing for comprehensive legal reform. They are calling for consent-based rape laws and the repeal of all discriminatory articles in personal status (or family) codes.

Meanwhile, Equality Now’s report offers a detailed legal roadmap for governments to align their laws with international human rights obligations. Recommendations include adopting a consent-based definition of rape, removing exemptions for marital rape, explicitly criminalising all forms of non-consensual sexual acts, and ensuring equal access to justice for all women, regardless of status, age, or marital situation.

Listen to women

The refusal to criminalise marital rape is not a cultural imperative. It is a political choice, a deliberate decision to maintain a system that protects abusers and silences survivors. This choice undermines the credibility of justice systems, violates international commitments, and reinforces cycles of gender-based violence.

Arab governments must act. The time for excuses is over. Legal reform must start with the recognition that consent matters, always, and for everyone. Marriage cannot and must not be used as a shield for violence. Rape is rape, whether committed by a stranger or a spouse.

Survivors across the region are speaking out. Feminist movements are mobilising. Regional and international frameworks demand action. Now, lawmakers must decide: will they uphold the status quo of impunity, or will they begin to build systems where women’s rights are upheld and women’s voices are truly heard? Justice begins with the law. But only when the law listens to women.

Paleki Ayang is the Middle East and North Africa Gender Advisor at Equality Now.

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.