33 MARTINDALE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE of the union or the promise of marriage termination once the bride or groom emigrates to another country successfully (Rissouni & Kareem al-Zanki, 2015). • Consanguineous marriages (cousin marriages) involve the marriage of blood relatives. According to UN Women, 50% of consanguineous marriages involve close cousins (UN Women, 2019). • In some communities in Morocco, underage marriages occur through abduction. The girl is chosen by the groom and kidnapped by the groomsmen. The soon-to-be bride is forced to have sexual relations with the groom (UN Women, 2019). Sexual intercourse before marriage is illegal in Morocco. Therefore, the bride has no other choice but to marry. • Polygamy is the practice where men have multiple wives. The underage girl to be married is usually much younger than the man and other wives. Therefore, she is used for childbearing and free labor (UN Women, 2019). • Ceremonial marriages like Al Fatiha, an unregistered religious marriage, are another form of child marriage in Morocco (ESEC, 2019). • The coercion of one or both parties of the marriage constitutes a forced marriage, whereas marriage by choice involves no pressure for the union (Sabbe et al., 2013). Typically, it is the bride’s family that coerces the young girl into thinking that marriage is necessary. As of 2022, the percentage of women in Morocco who were married before the age of 18 was 16%, above the average of 13.3% in the MENA region (UNICEF, 2022). Reflecting the scale of this issue, in 2019 there were 27,623 formal requests to the courts for permission to have an underage marriage (UNICEF, 2021). However, statistics on informal manifestations of child marriage are difficult to collect. Therefore, the magnitude of this issue is much greater than implied by formal data. To attempt to resolve the problem of child marriage, it is first necessary to understand why so many young girls get married. Causes and effects The motivations behind why girls marry so young are complex. Child marriage is fueled by social and cultural norms, economic incentives, needs of the family, contradictory laws, and a lack of enforcement of laws (UNICEF, 2022). Some communities in Morocco insist their women remain virgins before marriage (UN Women, 2019). To avoid damaging a girl’s status, parents marry their daughters young. For some girls, marrying and moving abroad at a young age provide chances for a better life, future, and path to financial stability, and they will seek to convince judges to approve their underage marriage. Especially in large families, fathers will marry off their daughters to lessen the financial burden on the family and to receive a dowry (Sabbe et al., 2013). The needs of the community also play a role, as girls living in rural areas are more likely to marry young compared to girls living in urban areas. A study conducted by the National Observatory for Human Development (NOHD) of Morocco found that 80% of women married before the age of 18 are from rural areas (NOHD, 2022), a circumstance caused by a lack of accessible education and need for labor in rural communities. Legal barriers and contradictions in Moroccan family law (discussed later) are other factors increasing the number of child marriages. The consequences of child marriage for the bride and her children are severe and reflected in the stories of many child brides. Mothers ages 15 to 19 years old are twice as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth compared to mothers 20 years old and above. Following this trend, infant mortality rates are higher if the mother is underaged. Young girls are exposed to domestic violence both physically and mentally. However, according to Morocco’s ESEC, the government does not collect data on this subject, so the consequences of underage marriage could be far greater. Furthermore, young brides typically drop out of school early (ESEC, 2019). Clearly, underage marriage takes an immense physical and mental toll on the young brides. The Moroccan Family Code In 1958, male religious scholars compiled the Moroccan Moudawana (Family Code). Many clauses in this document were based on the Maliki school of thought from Sunni Islam. The Family Code reflected extreme interpretations of the text. For instance, the code outlined the right to coerce a daughter into marriage, set the marriage age at 15 for girls and 18 for boys, legalized polygamy, and described a wife’s duty to obey her husband. Although it has since been rewritten, the original Family Code portrays women as subordinate to men and strips them of their rights (Murphy, 2020). In 2004, Morocco introduced a major reform to the Family Code, intending to increase the rights of women. Article 19, the most important reform, establishes the minimum legal age to marry as 18 years old for both men and women (ESEC, 2019).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA0OTQ5OA==