"Lowering the marriage age to 14": Stefanchuk stated that this norm will not be in the legislation
Kyiv • UNN
Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk clarified the situation regarding the draft law on the alleged lowering of the marriage age to 14. The norm was removed from the draft due to ambiguous public perception.
The Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, clarified the situation regarding the draft law with an alleged clause on lowering the marriage age to 14, stating that the draft law contained a norm with a different wording, but it has also been removed from the draft, writes UNN.
Criticism is spreading online regarding a provision in one of the articles of the draft law concerning the alleged lowering of the marriage age to 14. I will start by saying that this is not true. The draft law provided for a norm according to which, in the event of the birth of a child to a person who has reached 14 years of age, or her pregnancy, marriage may be permitted exclusively by a court decision.
He clarified: "Regarding this norm - it certainly does not have an encouraging character to enter into marriage from the age of 14." "It is protective - to protect the interests of a newborn child," the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada noted.
According to him, that is why a number of restrictions are provided:
- first - the fact of the birth of a child to a person who has reached 14 years of age, or her pregnancy;
- second - the existence of a court decision.
"This, in the opinion of the project's authors, was supposed to ensure what the world calls taking into account the best interests of the child: so that a newborn child, regardless of the circumstances that she did not create, would have a chance to grow up in a full-fledged, loving family, and not be left without a father or mother. The legal arguments here are unambiguous," the parliament speaker pointed out.
At the same time, the working group sees that society perceives this norm ambiguously. Therefore, we decided - based on the results of discussions - to remove this norm from the project and leave the current one. To summarize. This norm will not be in the project.
"We cannot make the other 1949 articles of a large and fundamental draft law dependent on the perception or non-perception of the provisions of one article. I thank everyone for their concern and discussion," Stefanchuk said.