Chad: Uproar over introducing law to make women equal

A government plan to give conservative Chad a new family law banning practices such as beating wives has provoked uproar. "At Friday prayers, Muslim preachers have taken to saying that President Idriss Deby and his family will burn in hell because it is against the Koran to say a woman is equal to a man," the weekly newspaper Notre Temps observed. The draft code is a 246-page document drawn up with the help of funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Deby pledged to speedily adopt it in a speech on 8 March to mark International Women’s Day.