Council of States wants better and longer protection for married minors
Published: Tuesday, Mar 12th 2024, 11:20
Updated At: Tuesday, Mar 12th 2024, 11:21
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The Council of States wants to protect married minors better and for longer. In future, a court will be able to declare marriages invalid until a spouse who is married under the age of 25.
Today, this is not possible if the person married as a minor has reached the age of 18 and has thus come of age. In future, the person concerned, but also the authorities, should be given sufficient time to take action against the marriage once they have reached the age of majority.
A second key point of the bill is that marriages of minors in Switzerland should generally be invalid in future if one of the spouses was resident in Switzerland at the time of the marriage.
This regulation is aimed in particular at preventing so-called summer vacation marriages. This means that minors living in Switzerland are married abroad during their vacations. Furthermore, marriages entered into abroad in which one partner is under the age of 16 are generally not to be recognized.
On Tuesday, the Council of States unanimously approved the corresponding Federal Council bill, which consists of amendments to several decrees, after a brief discussion. It will now go to the National Council.
Balancing of interests remains in place
The current law provides for the possibility of tolerating underage marriages in individual cases. This should be maintained in future. If a person is still a minor at the time of the assessment, the marriage should be allowed to continue if this is in the overriding interest of the person concerned.
However, if the person is between the ages of 18 and 25, they must declare that they wish to remain married of their own free will.
It makes sense to maintain this balancing of interests, said Daniel Jositsch (SP/ZH), President of the Council of States Legal Affairs Committee, on Tuesday. It is conceivable, he said, that a 17-year-old from a country that allows marriage from the age of 16 could marry an adult, come to Switzerland and become pregnant. Such a case would have to be examined specifically.
Not every underage marriage is a forced marriage. There are special regulations for this type of marriage.
The Council of States debated amendments to the Civil Code, the Foreign Nationals and Integration Act, the Asylum Act, the Partnership Act and the Federal Act on Private International Law.
It also followed the proposal of its advisory committee to amend the Swiss Criminal Code: By specifying an article, forced marriages should in future be punishable under criminal law regardless of whether they are civil or religious forced marriages.
350 suspected cases between 2013 and 2017
Forced marriages and marriages with minors have increasingly come to the attention of the general public in recent years. In Switzerland, authorities counted a total of around 350 suspected cases of invalid marriages due to coercion or minors in a survey between 2013 and 2017.
The Federal Council presented its draft bill on the protection of minors from forced marriages last August.
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