Legal Age of Marriage in Syria

While it is not easy to stop the suicide of married girls or even prove that child marriage contributes to it, the number of young girls who have committed suicide shortly after their marriage indicates that it is a dangerous path. According to Sweid, a precautionary solution would be to eliminate child marriage by educating families about their dangers. This study calls for interventions to prevent child marriage and improve access to sexual and reproductive health services for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. There are many reasons for child marriage in Syria. The authors of the report documented 59 cases of female child marriage (under the age of 17) among the 70,000 people living in the villages of Kafr Nabl, Jbala and Mu`arrat Hirma in rural Idlib. They also documented six cases of suicide of underage married girls. During its regular general review in 2016, Syria agreed to consider recommendations to protect girls from child marriage. If marriages remain clandestine, there are negative consequences. Undocumented children struggle to access health care and education later in life. The effects of child marriage on displaced and refugee Syrians could last for generations. One reason the rate of child marriage is difficult to determine is that many refugees avoid registering marriages because they have no documents or official residence. In some cases, the marriage of a minor woman violates the host country`s laws, causing parents or guardians to circumvent the rules by using local sheikhs to perform unofficial marriages, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

Your home is made of wooden piles, plastic sheeting and concrete floors. The ceiling leaks and the floor is flooded when it rains. There is mud everywhere outside. This is the daily reality not only for his family, but also for an estimated 88,000 of the 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. These poor living conditions and the resulting limited resources contribute to the fact that many families marry at an early age. In 2019, at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, Syria committed to reducing the rate of child marriage from 13% to 5% through laws and interventional policy agendas. Child marriage is prevalent in rural Idlib and many other rural areas. Prior to 2011, the source of marriage legislation was Syrian family law, which invokes Sharia law. Syrian family law sets the legal age of marriage at 18 for men and 17 for women.

However, a religious judge has the right to approve marriages for men from the age of 15 and for girls from the age of 13, as long as the minor consciously seeks marriage and appears mature. The 2019 UN Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria includes provisions to address child marriage. In Lebanon, a 2016 survey shows that 41% of displaced young Syrian women aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18. Since many marriages go unregistered, these figures may actually underestimate the actual rates: «Child marriages existed in Syria before the war, but they have increased significantly in recent years. Poverty, unemployment, lack of education, difficult living conditions, in addition to families` fears for their daughters` safety outside the home, have made marriage the easiest option,» said Faten Sweid, mental health counselor. The legal age of marriage in Jordan is 18, with exceptions granted by a judge to persons aged 15 and over. In the local Jordanian population, the rate of child marriage among girls under the age of 18 is around 10%. Education is key to protecting girls from child marriage.

Being in school strengthens girls` knowledge and skills so that they are better able to delay marriage. Enrolling them in school among their peers may support the idea that girls are still children and do not want to marry. Child marriage is not a problem in itself. It results from a distorted gender environment, where conflict exacerbates vulnerability in health, education and protection. Therefore, the answer should not be isolated. The entire humanitarian community must address the problem together. It is worth remembering that child marriage took place in Syria before the conflict. Preventing child marriage in times of crisis means ensuring that it does not happen in times of stability. Syria ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993, which sets the minimum age of marriage at 18, and acceded in 2003 to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which obliges States to guarantee free and unconditional consent to marriage. Marriages in Syria are legally contracted according to the religious beliefs of the persons concerned.

As a result, Muslims conclude the so-called ceremony of the Sheikh Book and then register the marriage contract with the Sharia court. Christians perform a ceremony in church and then register the marriage contract with the ecclesiastical court of the respective denomination. Ordinary marriages are now subject to fines under Law 24/2018. Law 24/2018 was introduced because, during the conflict, many people were abused through fraudulent marriage procedures, especially women who found themselves in a precarious situation without recourse when their partners left them. In other situations, legal complications arose in cases of pregnancy or childbirth before the religious courts registered the marriage in question and issued the licence. In addition, the number of habitual marriages in Syria has increased since the beginning of the war, mainly due to the lack of state control in some parts of the country. The original bill even went so far as to impose prison sentences on offenders to reflect the seriousness of the situation, but the People`s Assembly considered this to be too arbitrary a provision, so they voted to replace that penalty with a fine. Child marriage has a negative impact on girls as they face responsibilities they cannot take on. The Civil Status Code mainly contains substantive legal issues and reserves procedural issues to be followed during judicial proceedings to the Code of Civil Procedure, previously provided for in Legislative Decree 84/1953 and currently in Law 1/2016.

The provisions of the Civil Code derive from the legal developments of the former Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Jordan, as well as from the principles of the Hanafi school of thought and partially non-Hanafi perspectives. In order to understand the areas regulated by this Code, an overview of its structure should be given. It should also be borne in mind that a Syrian national technically needs permission from the Ministry of Interior to marry a foreigner in Syria, as this is considered a national security interest. While this may seem strange, the reasoning is that it would not be clear in which country the couple`s children would feel a sense of loyalty under such circumstances. If a marriage is contracted abroad and one of the spouses is a foreigner, the registration of the marriage in Syria requires the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.