'Female caregivers need better loan system, more legal protection'

AMMAN — Experts have called for securing a better loan system to ensure that women will not end up in prison for failing to pay their financial obligations.

The experts were mainly referring to what has been known as Gharimat, indebted Jordanian women unable to pay back loans they had taken to support their families, whose ordeal surfaced in 2019.

The issue of Gharimat was debated in an online dialogue entitled "Microcredit and Women's Debt and Its Consequences", which was held last week by Solidarity Is Global Institute (SIGI).

The experts, who are specialised in small loans from a gender-perspective, pointed out that small loans obtained to cover the family’s needs should not be secured through small lending institutions.

Such needs, the experts pointed out, should be secured by the Zakat institutions, the National Aid Fund as ensuring a comprehensive social security plan for all citizens.

In a call-in with Jordan Television’s Friday morning show “Yise’d Sabahak” in March 2019, His Majesty King Abdullah saluted all Jordanian mothers on the occasion of Mother’s Day, and called for a joint national effort to support indebted Jordanian women unable to pay back loans they had taken to support their families. 

The dialogue is part of SIGI’s Economic Empowerment Unit and as part of a project on the Protection and Economic Development of Syrian female Refugees and Jordanian Women (Sanabel 2), which is supported by the European Regional Development and Protection Programme (RDPP), which includes the governorates of Mafraq, Irbid, Zarqa and Amman.

The participants pointed out that most loans provided by lending institutions in microfinance on the basis of the empowerment and economic development of poor families, especially women with no steady income, usually cover their basic needs and requirements of their families.

Participants in the session explained that this issue makes many women suffer from debt and get in trouble legally and they become socially stigmatised.

"One of the women who was served a legal notice because she was legally prosecuted jumped from a window and died because she feared imprisonment,” said SIGI’s Executive Director Asma Khader.

Khader added that other were “divorced or physically assaulted by their husbands”.

"That is why these women [Gharimat] should not be imprisoned."

“We need to explore all available options to ensure that these women are protected by the law before obtaining any financial loans,” Khader, a lawyer and activist, stressed.

Also speaking during the event, the Zakat Fund Director General Abed Smeirat said that his organisation's main concern is humanitarian protection of the poor.

He pointed out that the fund adopted the cases of many Gharimat and have freed some 370 women from prisons whose debts did not exceed JD1,000.

The Sanabel 2 project aims to strengthen the economic empowerment and participation of women in Jordan and raising their awareness about the legal guarantees related to protect their labour and entrepreneurial rights.