{"id":31057,"date":"2016-12-14T01:03:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T01:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/tunisian-court-okays-marriage-of-pregnant-13-year\/"},"modified":"2016-12-14T01:02:40","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T01:02:40","slug":"tunisian-court-okays-marriage-of-pregnant-13-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/tunisian-court-okays-marriage-of-pregnant-13-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunisian court okays marriage of pregnant 13-year-old"},"content":{"rendered":"

{A Tunisian court has approved the marriage of a 13-year-old girl to a relative who made her pregnant, an official said Tuesday.}<\/p>\n

The judgement triggered anger from non-governmental organisations which said the girl had been raped.<\/p>\n

The girl, from the northwestern region of Kef, had a sexual relationship with the brother of her brother-in-law.<\/p>\n

She was 13 years and 11 months old and “was not raped”, said Chokri Mejri, the court official.<\/p>\n

“We interviewed the girl and after verifying all the details, we considered her fit for marriage. As proof, she is pregnant,” he said.<\/p>\n

Under Tunisian law, sex with a girl under 15 without the use of force is punishable by six years in prison, but the culprit can halt proceedings by marrying the victim.<\/p>\n

“The two families demanded marriage to avoid a scandal,” Mejri said.<\/p>\n

The court gave its green light on December 1 and the marriage agreement was signed on December 5, he said.<\/p>\n

A wedding party had been planned for Sunday but was cancelled after the government’s child protection office called for the marriage to be annulled.<\/p>\n

“When it’s a 13-year-old child, we can’t talk of a sexual relation with consent. It’s a rape,” the agency’s representative Houda Abboudi said.<\/p>\n

“The court’s decision didn’t take into account the interests of this child… who will marry her rapist,” she said.<\/p>\n

The Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD) rights group said the decision was “scandalous”.<\/p>\n

“Judges think that at the age of 13… she can give consent,” said ATFD head Monia Ben Jemia.<\/p>\n

“At 13 years old, one can’t give free and enlightened judgement, especially since there is no sex education at school,” she said.<\/p>\n

Tunisia is viewed as being ahead of most Arab countries on women’s rights.<\/p>\n

A bill to counter violence against women, proposed in 2014, is still waiting to be discussed in parliament.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{A Tunisian court has approved the marriage of a 13-year-old girl to a relative who made her pregnant, an official said Tuesday.} The judgement triggered anger from non-governmental organisations which said the girl had been raped. The girl, from the northwestern region of Kef, had a sexual relationship with the brother of her brother-in-law. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[100],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice","tag-africa","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31057"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31057"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}