Press release
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Today, Sunday, March 27, 2022, the Studies and Research Unit of the Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue issued a new report entitled: (Underage Marriage in Egypt and Prospects for Renewing Religious Discourse).
The report emphasized that marriage in Egypt is not subject to civil laws, but rather to the personal status law that is regulated by religions in Egypt, meaning that religious institutions are responsible for the provisions of marriage. This highlights the importance of renewing religious discourse in curbing early marriage of girls on the shoulders of religious authorities in Egypt.
The report addressed a number of themes, including:
Dimensions and repercussions of early marriage in Egypt
Where the practice of early marriage for girls is widespread in Egypt, and in villages and rural areas it occurs widely, as if the custom has become to involve underage girls in forced marriages, detracting from their rights in the crime of depriving them of enjoying their childhood.
The report stated that one of the repercussions of early marriage of minors in society is the high divorce rates in Egypt. It also caused the crisis that stuck to the Egyptian state in the modern era, namely the population increase, as Egypt became the 14th globally in terms of the number of births annually, the first in the Arab world, and the third among African countries in terms of population.
The unfair economic conditions are pushing families to throw their young daughters into the cage to marry the oldest of them, and with the Corona pandemic, conditions have worsened, income rates have decreased, and unemployment has risen among heads of families and daily wage workers, so some have had to agree to the marriage of their girls.
The report also presented the provisions of marriage and its age in Islamic Sharia and international conventions that criminalize the marriage of underage girls, as well as in Egyptian law.
Prospects for renewing religious discourse
The report emphasized that early marriage in Egypt requires a revolution and renewal in the religious discourse, because the documentation of marriage contracts requires the marriage official or the pope in the church, in villages and rural areas in particular, where the main problem lies in some misconceptions about the age of marriage with a religious basis. Where Muslim and Christian clerics agree that the age of marriage is linked to the signs of puberty for girls starting from 9 to 13 years old, this does not give the right for some clerics to agree to document marriage.
Finally, the report stated that the figures may refer to 117,000 underage girls who marry early, but these numbers are unreal, perhaps representing one third of them, given the cover-up and privacy of the issue in society. No matter how the state tries to legislate laws, criminalize early marriage, abide by foreign agreements, and intensify domestic penalties, renewing religious discourse is the order to be followed to eradicate this phenomenon.
