France’s parliament has passed an amendment to raise the age at which women may marry from 15 to 18. This move is taken in order to block the (2003) estimated 70,000 adolescents living in arranged marriages. This phenomenon is mostly restricted to the immigrant communities of South-East Asian communities.
Although no statistics exist on the practice, most girls forced into wedlock are believed to be Muslims whose immigrant parents arrange a marriage for them in their native countries.
France has Europe’s largest Muslim minority of 5 million, or eight percent of its population. Most of them are of North African origin.
- Reuters
The amendment, approved by an overwhelming cross-party majority, is also backed by the justice minister, Dominique Perben, who said allowing girls to marry at 15 was “manifestly a false freedom”.
- The Guardian
The original law, part of the Napoleonic code enacted in March 1840. The code, also known as the Civic code, largely enforced liberal ideals such as equality before the law and property rights, but was also used to establish patriarchal rights - that of the husband being the ‘ruler’ of the household.
Though the act already maintains that citizens cannot be married without consent, this new law reinforces this by blocking all marriages under the age of 18. The origial civic law stood as follows:
- A man before the age of 18, and a woman before 15 complete, are incapable of contracting marriage.
- The government shall be at liberty, nevertheless, upon weighty reasons, to grant dispensations of age.
- There can be no marriage where consent is wanting.
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