MARRIAGE WITHOUT AN AGE LIMIT

Experts have calculated that our "blue" planet is getting younger because half of the world's population at the moment are people below 25. The age of one billion people on our planet is from 10 to 19, and this is the biggest youth generation in the history of mankind. For this reason, taking care of this part of society should become one of the priorities of every self-respecting state.

According to Azerbaijan's State Statistics Committee, at the end of the last year, people below 14 comprised 24 per cent of the country's population, while 29 per cent were young people aged between 18 and 34. More than half of them live in urban areas.

According to UN specialists, every day about 200,000 teenaged girls get married in the world. What is more, many of them are often prompted to do so by their own parents, and every day more than 40,000 teenaged girls become mothers. It is no secret to anyone that early marriages are not rare in our country, especially in the province. Girls sometimes become wives at 13 or 15, although according to the Family Code of Azerbaijan, the marriage age for women is 17 and for men - 18.

Juliet against her own will

Nigar, a native of Lankaran District, has just turned 17, but despite her young age, the girl already has unenviable status as "a divorced woman".

She grew up in an ordinary village family, went to an ordinary village school and studied quite well. However, when she turned 12, her father banned the girl from going to school. He said you know how to read and write, and that's enough. Although she cried and begged to be allowed to complete at least nine grades, her father was unshakable. He explained his position by the fact that the main task of a woman is to be a good housewife who takes care of her husband and children.

When Nigar turned 13, matchmakers became regular visitors to their house. Her parents started thinking that if they do not get their daughter married now, there might be no such proposals later. Therefore, their daughter risks becoming a "spinster". After several rejected candidates, her parents chose one "Romeo" who, however, was much older than Shakespeare's character. Nigar's potential husband was 27, but the difference of 14 years did not confuse the girl's parents and they were happy to give the matchmakers the go-ahead for the wedding. The groom and the bride never saw each other before the wedding. Since the girl was only 13 at the time and had not come of age yet, the wedding ceremony was limited only to the Muslim religious ritual - kabin.

Immediately after the wedding, her husband's relatives started wondering when Nigar will have a child. However, she failed to become a mother for two years, and her spouse's family insisted that he leave her because she was sterile. Doctors who visited the girl said that she was too young and that her body would be ready to give birth only some time later. But her husband's relatives did not believe the doctors' arguments, and at their demand, Nigar's husband returned her to her parents' house. Since then, the girl has been shunned by all her neighbours and relatives as they think she herself is to blame for what happened. Her father keeps telling her that she's living off him and that he is forced to maintain her.

Unfortunately, Nigar's personal life is probably finished, because in remote areas of Azerbaijan, no-one will marry a girl who has already been married.

Everything could have been different if she had continued her education. Having found a job, Nigar would have been able to maintain herself, become a self-sufficient personality, find her love and create a family. But the girl's parents chose a different path for their daughter, which actually ruined her life…

Early "entry" into mature life

In all developed countries of the world, you can officially marry only after reaching the age of 18. Nevertheless, according to estimates of the UN Population Fund (UNPF), more than 100 million teenaged girls in the world will get married before coming of age during the next 1,000 years. Some of them will be only eight or nine years old and will marry against their own will.

Early marriages are usually practised in countries where it is a well-established tradition, which is why at times it is not just difficult, but almost impossible to protest against them. The purpose of early marriages is to keep a woman under a man's strict control in her husband's family and probably, to prevent sexual contacts before marriage. In many societies, independence which emerges in teenagers is extremely undesirable for women who are expected to be obedient. For this reason, an early marriage is convenient because it almost "repeals" the teenaged period, weakens any demonstrations of independence and suppresses a developing personality.

However, the strongest factor that provokes early marriages is poverty. Marriage is often a kind of strategy for the survival of a girl, especially if her future husband is older and richer.

However, whatever the main reason for early marriages, they endanger the rights of children and teenagers. The right to full consent to marry is recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women says that "the engagement and marriage of a child have no legal force"… An early marriage can put an end to all the possibilities of children to develop and get an education. Very often it becomes the beginning of life-long home and sexual slavery. 

An early marriage may also have negative physical consequences for girls because it causes early pregnancy and childbirth, which increase the mother and child death rate by several times.

Pregnancy is the main cause of the death of girls aged between 15 and 19. According to the World Health Organization, the likelihood of girls below 15 dying during labour pains is five times higher than of women aged 20-29. Their children also have less chances to survive: if the mother is not 18 yet, the likelihood of her child dying in the first year of his life is 60 per cent higher than of a child born by a woman over 19.

The legal aspect of the problem

As we said above, marriages with minors in Azerbaijan are not registered by government agencies, which is why people use kabin, i.e. a religious marriage. However in 2003, the Board of Muslims of the Caucasus issued an edict under which religious marriages should be contracted only after "the groom and the bride" submit a marriage certificate issued by the state. But this edict is violated all the time and kabin is often performed without relevant documents. There are quite a few families, especially in regions of the country, where parents are trying to get their daughter married as soon as possible. They do not care at all that marrying minor girls is a criminal offence under Articles 152 and 153 of the Criminal Code (sexual harassment of people below the age of 16). This offence envisages from two to three years' imprisonment. However, it seems that people who commit such illegal actions are not held criminally liable since marriages with minor girls are still common in Azerbaijan.

When a family is created in such an illegal way, there are also problems with the registration of children born in such marriages. Such a marriage has no legal force, which means that the parties do not have legal and inheritance commitments.

Often, when parents doom their daughters to such a marriage, they look for someone to blame when it turns out that "the husband" is officially married to another woman or says that he is going to officially marry not their daughter, but another girl. The "beloved wife" is forced to return to her relatives or is simply kicked out by her husband, sometimes together with her child.

No-one really thinks about the legal protection of a woman in such a marriage, which is why all her rights consist only of commitments with regard to her husband and his relatives.

A teenaged girl who does not know the law, does not even have a passport and does not have the rights of a legal wife, can easily fall victim to anyone - a maniac, a criminal engaged in human trafficking, etc.

How many girls are living a miserable half-starved life in the house of their husbands, tolerating humiliation, insults and torture and having no chance to leave? How many of them are begging in the capital and in neighbouring states and are working as prostitutes after they are taken abroad and then kicked out by their husbands? Unfortunately, official statistical figures cannot answer these questions because no such surveys have been carried out.

If such monitoring is carried out at the state level, the figure we will get and the scale of the problem will horrify us.

Early marriage is a result of social troubles

The head of the press service of the Board of Muslims of the Caucasus, Haci Akif, said that the decision to ban kabins without marriage certificates was adopted after it became known that some people prefer kabin to an official marriage in some districts of the country and in the capital itself.

"We live in a secular state and should obey its laws, especially as in such marriages, the rights of the woman are not protected by anything - neither by national traditions nor by local legislation. For this reason, mullahs subordinate to the Board of Muslims of the Caucasus are not allowed to perform kabin in this case," Haci Akif pointed out.

Incidentally, speaking about the genuineness of kabin, we should point out that Islam recommends that it should be performed in the presence of witnesses and made public. Kabin should also indicate the mehriyya which can be compared with insurance. Thus, Islam prioritized the rights of a woman 14 centuries ago. Along with guaranteeing her political, economic and civil rights, taking account of her vulnerability and possible divorce (incidentally, Islam calls it the most condemnable and undesirable of permitted deeds), Islam determined a mehriyya for her - for example, a sum of money specified in a prenuptial agreement.

The head of the Tamiz Dunya (Clean World) public association, Mehriban Zeynalova, pointed out that the number of early marriages has been increasing in our country of late. Our interviewee stressed that this problem is especially topical for regions of the country where women have no prospects other than marriage. Early marriages are more common in southern regions of Azerbaijan such as Masalli and Lankaran. Moreover, the head of the association pointed out that very often minor girls marry foreign citizens through kabin, i.e. they move abroad where they are subjected to sexual exploitation.

Early marriages are also registered in Abseron villages and even in Baku, but in the capital there are only one-off cases.

Zeynalova stressed that if previously parents thought that their main task was to get their daughter educated, now many are trying to get them married as soon as possible, which they think will secure their future.

Moreover, our interviewee believes that some parents who are in favour of early marriages explain their decision by the fact that in this way, they prevent their daughter from getting involved in antenuptial relationships. However, not every early marriage is a happy one. More often it is the other way round, a teenaged wife has almost no rights in the event of divorce because her marriage was not registered officially. Moreover, Zeynalova stressed that 13-14-year-old girls are not ready for marriage either physically or psychologically.

The head of the committee for family, women's and children's affairs, Hicran Huseynova, said that the problem of early marriages in our country needs to be seriously researched first. Such marriages were regarded as normal in Azerbaijan before, but now personal requirements have changed. Huseynova pointed out that at this moment, early marriages are rather a result of social instability where parents are trying their best to make sure that the family of their daughter's husband is taking care of her. No-one ever thinks whether this girl is ready for such changes in her life.

"There are cases of early marriages in Azerbaijan. But this figure is lower than the 70 per cent announced by the UN. Some parents think that the material situation of young men living in Iran is better. For this reason, they want their teenaged daughters to marry only Iranians." She said that parents play a special role in the marriage of teenaged girls, because 14-15-year-old children cannot cross the border on their own and they cross it only with the parents. Huseynova pointed out that the committee has already submitted to the Milli Maclis a proposal to increase the marriage age limit for young men and women to 18. She said that Azerbaijan has joined the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It says that the marriage age for young men and women should be 18 while the Azerbaijani constitution says that the marriage age for girls is 17.

Many international experts think that it is necessary to take the most decisive measures to reduce the number of early marriages. Among these measures is the dissemination of information about the increasing risk of HIV infections among the girls who marry men who are much older than them, stimulation of dialogue between the state and local authorities to respect the dignity and rights of all citizens and to prevent situations caused by forced or early marriages which might threaten the health and security of teenaged girls. Moreover, the state must help teenaged girls to get at least secondary education and concentrate its efforts on the original causes of early marriages such as poverty and discrimination. If we don't think about this problem today, what will we get tomorrow?..