By Omnia Talal, Aswat Masriya It took Nadia almost twenty years to prove that her ex-husband was indeed the father of her daughter. By the end of 2011, 49 and divorced, Nadia won a case confirming the identity of her daughter’s father and finally allowing her 25-year-old to issue a national identification card, a document vital for everyday life which must by law be obtained by all citizens at age 16. Without a national ID number, her daughter had no access to post-secondary schooling, a job, the right to vote, travel or conduct the most basic financial or administrative transactions, or even get married. Years back, Nadia had entered into a common-law (urfi) marriage. She gave birth to her daughter just days after the marriage was officiated in 1985. Shortly after, the two were divorced, but her ex-husband amicably agreed to pay child support, which he continued doing for four years until one day he stopped, and in 1990 he raised and won a court case denying that he was the father, using his daughter’s birth date to cast doubt on her parentage. Deprived of all her basic rights to…
’20 Years to Prove He Was My Child’s Father’: Paternity Disputes in Egypt Destroy Lives
December 3, 2015
