MOI obliged to register children from customary marriages after court ruling

The Administrative Court requested on Sunday that the Interior Ministry temporarily register children from informal marriages until the child’s paternity can be proven.

The ruling states that the Civil Registration Authority, which falls under the Interior Ministry’s supervision, should register the name of the child under the name of the father as given by the mother. The ruling also obliges the Education Ministry to enrol these children in schools suitable for their ages.

Customary marriages (urfi) are informal procedures done without official contracts, and are more common amongst young people and adolescents who cannot afford the costs associated with marriage in Egypt. Children born into customary marriages can therefore face challenges surrounding their legal status, particularly after parentage disputes between the mother and father.

Some observers have claimed the court ruling is revolutionary. Nevine Ebaid, founder of the New Woman Foundation, told Mada Masr the ruling is a positive step toward improving the status of children with unknown paternity.

Ebaid explained that children of customary marriages, and children with unknown paternity in general, suffer the most from these marriages because they are not allowed to have national IDs and are not enrolled in schools.

According to Ebaid, most of these children end up on the streets due to these legal restrictions. She criticized the lack of government strategy to deal with controversial personal status issues, as well as women’s and children’s rights.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a presidential decree amending the Social Solidarity Law in March, redefining orphan children to include children with unproven parental leniency.

The definition includes “whoever whose parents are dead, or his/her father is dead even if the mother is married, or whose father or both parents are unknown.”

The new decree enables children and people with unproven paternity to register and have official papers, including birth certificates and national IDs, which also allows them to join state-run schools.

In January, Sisi also issued another decree amending the Children Law that lays out provisions for sending children with unknown paternity to host families. The law previously stipulated that those children should spend two years at a state facility before sending them to host families. The new amendment decreases the age at which host families can raise those children to three months.

According to Social Solidarity Minister Ghada Waly, the amendment is aimed at improving the psychological and mental health of these children by offering them a better environment at earlier stages of their life.

Deputy Minister for Social Solidarity Hosni Youssef said in an interview with privately owned broadcaster Al-Hayat in December that the ministry is “witnessing a revolution” in terms of how it deals with issues of children with unknown paternity.

But Ebaid has a different take on the issue.

“Dealing with customary marriage and lineage requires a new look at the issue of personal status and the law organizing it, which has always been looked at as a taboo and was heavily politicized,” she claimed.

What further complicates the problem, according to Ebaid, is the absence of any statistics regarding the numbers of children with unproven lineage.

“Customary marriages and those children are always despised by society and women who undergo these marriages are stigmatized, which is used by the state to not care about working on producing real statistics about the issue," she argued.

“It is an issue that has to do with personal freedoms, and we should be open about discussing that,” Ebaid added.

This article has been edited for clarity.