Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

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Markus Loewe
Box 1: Discrimination against women in the civil-status codes of
Arab countries
Women’s rights when they marry
Only the Hanafi school of Islamic law permits women to decide autonomously
on marriage. In the MENA region, it is only Moroccan law that largely reflects
this doctrine. In other Arab countries, women are in need of a male guardian to
marry. As a rule, this will be the father or a brother, otherwise the closest male
relation in patrilinear succession. Women who have been married and divorced
are in some cases allowed to remarry without a guardian. In many countries
consent of a male guardian has become a formality that can be bypassed by
having a court appoint a ‘formal guardian.’ Still, it is important not to underestimate
the consequences that this guardianship arrangement and the social constraints
it entails may have on women’s actual freedom of choice in entering in
marriage. Only in Yemen is marriage concluded not by a women but by a
guardian acting in her name.
But in some countries under-age women can be married off by their guardian
even against their will, indeed sometimes even without their knowledge. The
reason for this is that the age of marriageability for women is for the most part
lower than it is for men; in Tunisia and Syria, for example, women are considered
legally marriageable when they have reached the age of 17 and 16 years,
respectively, while in both countries the age for men is 20 years. But in all such
countries the legal age of majority and criminal responsibility is 18 years. In
Yemen, there is no minimum age for women to marry, and only the consummation
of marriage (15 years of age) is regulated by law.
Only in Tunisia is polygamy prohibited by law, whereas in Morocco it is conditioned
explicitly on the approval of a judge and the consent of the first wife. In
all Arab countries women have the right to demand a marriage contract that lays
down in detail the marital rights and obligations of husband and wife and may
e.g. exclude the husband’s option to marry another women. But in practice very
few women make use of this option. Moreover, a marriage contract does not in
effect permit a wife to prevent her husband from marrying a second wife. If the
contract is broken by the husband, the wife is only entitled to petition a divorce
court to have her marriage dissolved.
Women’s marital rights
A woman’s marital rights include an absolute right to support by her husband,
while the husband has a right to demand obedience from his wife. In some Arab
countries this explicitly includes a husband’s comprehensive and exclusive sexual
rights vis-à-vis his wife. In Tunisia and Morocco there is no legal provision
German Development Institute