Adopting a specific law to address VAWG has multiple aims. Most importantly, it serves to clearly target all forms of this violence and not to fragment it in dispersed legal texts. As VAWG is multidimensional, combating it is not limited to applying solely a criminal approach. Rather, it requires a comprehensive treatment of the problem, in which the preventive dimension has a core function, as we shall see below. Only two States in the region have adopted a comprehensive approach: Morocco and Tunisia.
Other countries have legal rules criminalizing various acts of VAWG dispersed in several laws. Examples of these laws include the penal code, the nationality laws, family laws and some other specific laws, as the anti-trafficking law in Egypt, and the Jordanian law on electronic crimes.