The Women’s Affairs Unit at the College of Medicine, University of Baghdad, organized an awareness symposium entitled “Family cohesion, and the real reasons for the spread of divorce rates,” presented by both the teaching staff, Professor Dr. Hedef Dhafir El-Yassin, and the assistant teacher, Ruaa Bidawi Hamza, on Wednesday, the seventeenth of April, at Al-Kindi Hall in the college. The symposium, which was attended by a number of male and female members of the college, aimed to shed light on the phenomenon of family disintegration as one of the social problems while providing a number of solutions at the level of the family in particular and society in its broader circle, to achieve an interconnected society characterized by family cohesion and based on calm, rational dialogue. The symposium’s topics included introducing the concept of family cohesion and disintegration, while highlighting the importance of dialogue as one of the most prominent tools for enhancing cohesion within the family. It also discussed the reasons leading to the disintegration of families and communities, perhaps the most prominent of which is the absence of a legal framework to combat domestic violence, as well as reviewing a set of solutions that enhance harmony and cohesion within the same family. The symposium concluded with a number of recommendations, including the necessity of moving the vote on the law to combat domestic violence in the Iraqi parliament to constitute a legal framework that protects the family from violence as one of the causes of family disintegration. As well as calling for the need for governmental and societal action on a broad level to limit the marriage of minors, in addition to raising awareness of the false and destructive societal concepts that are being exported to the family and society through social media.
