How many years must a child be deprived of his father before it counts as a crime against humanity? Testimony of a father, a member of the association, who has not spent a single holiday with his son in four years.
Testimony of a father, a member of the association's board, published on the eve of Eid al-Adha 2025.
"I have not spent a single holiday with my son in four years. Four years of total deprivation: not seeing him, not exercising the most basic of the rights that bind a father and his son.
How many years must a child be deprived of his father before it is considered a crime against humanity? Are four years not enough to sound the alarm? Can a child bear this forced absence without being deeply wounded? Where are 'the best interests of the child' when he is deprived of his father? Or is that principle only invoked to justify exclusion and erasure?
What is happening is not a passing family dispute: it is a human tragedy for which the father pays the price, and the child even more. Nothing justifies this silence."
A year earlier, at Eid al-Adha 2024
"How does a father celebrate Eid when he is deprived of his children? How can he celebrate when he is psychologically, morally and financially exhausted by the deprivation and by procedures that have dragged on for nearly 40 months? And what state are the children in, without their father on the day of the feast? Eid 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024: I celebrated none of them with my son… You pay the maintenance and you do not celebrate with them? You do not even see them? You do not even know the name of the school where your son is enrolled — are you not his legal guardian? His money is lawful, but seeing him would be unlawful?"
This testimony is one of the thousands of cases the association receives. The family bond is not a luxury: it is a right of the child before being a right of the father.