Tunisia - (AFP) - An advertisement for a website that specializes in providing divorce counseling between spouses in Tunisia has sparked widespread reactions in a country that witnesses high divorce rates, according to the authorities.

Last week, large banners with an online address appeared in the streets of the capital, Tunis, to introduce a new website, "The first Tunisian site that supports your decision" that provides counseling services to facilitate the course of the divorce process between couples in the country. And the banner read, "Divorce, the decision is yours, and we take care of the procedures (and we take care of the procedures)."

The campaign sparked a condemnation from the Deanship of Lawyers, which considered that launching a company whose job it is to "encourage" divorce is "unacceptable and threatens families."

The company works, according to the definition on its website, to educate young people about to get married about the importance of choosing a life partner and benefiting from previous stories and experiences so that they can ensure a stable and healthy marital life. In the event that there is a final decision to separate, we provide safe, economic and guaranteed services and support your decision, whether you are a man. or a woman.”

The company set a fee of 1,200 Tunisian dinars (about 374 euros) for performing these services.

"This affects family relations... affects the family's public order and disintegrates the Tunisian family," Dean of Lawyers Hatem Al-Meziou said in Monday's statement.

He added, "We do not know who stands behind them (the company's owners), and they are not lawyers." Therefore, the commission filed a lawsuit against the company and its supervisors, and "we launched litigation procedures," according to Al-Mazio.

The Tunis municipality asked the platform to withdraw the banners "or they will be removed" within two weeks.

"Either he withdraws it or we will remove it," said the mayor of Tunis, Souad Abdel-Rahim, in a statement to state radio.

And local media quoted a statement by the Minister of Women, Family, Childhood and the Elderly, Amal Hajj Musa, last April, in which she confirmed that divorce cases reached 13,000 during the year 2021, which is a "very high" number compared to the population.

Statistics from the National Institute of Statistics (governmental) show that 16,750 divorce cases were registered in 2018, in a country inhabited by about 12 million people.

The platform attributes the high number of divorce cases in the country to "the lack of sexual education and frankness between spouses in material matters, especially in conservative Arab societies."

Tunisian law prohibits polygamy.