The Independent Commission for Human Rights Adapting Personal Status Laws to the Convention The Personal Status Law establishes an inequitable gender relationship, granting men supremacy over women within the family structure. Such an imbalanced relationship subjugates women to men by allowing them to have control over women’s bodies, work and movement. The Jordanian Personal Status Law No. (16) of 1976, enforced in the West Bank, and the Family Rights Law issued by virtue of Order No. (303) of 1954, enforced in the Gaza Strip, grants men exclusively the power to file for marriage and gives them the right to guardianship and trusteeship. It also considers a man responsible for supporting his wife, and so she must obey him and accept his decisions with regard to changing their place of residence or preventing her from working. The law also grants the man the right to divorce with no conditions or restrictions while conditioning the wife’s right to request divorce on presenting justifications (absence, discord, dispute, imprisonment of the husband) and the consent of the Sharia judiciary. In 2012, the Chief Justice Bureau issued a number of decisions within the sphere of its powers to facilitate litigation proceedings and do justice to the categories affected by the valid law. The first decision was relevant to the right of the father and the mother to host and meet with their children. The parent who does not have the right to guardianship has the right according to this decision to host the children at his\her home for (24) hours per week. The second decision was relevant to Khul’ (separation), whereby the fiancée can divorce her fiancé before the consummation of marriage provided she pays him back the expenditures of the betrothal. The third decision is relevant to the procedures of separation due to dispute and discord. Pursuant to this decision, the condition of proof by the plaintiff was revoked and replaced with the condition of verification. The plaintiff should, in cases of separation due to dispute and discord, support the reason of claim through verification of the occurrence of harm through a testimony by witnesses, medical report or a complaint to the police. The recognition of the principle of “verification” grants the judge the power to decide divorce based on the facts of the lawsuit, and so minimize the proceedings of litigation in cases of separation due to dispute and discord. 28