Migrant crisis: Dutch alarm over child brides from Syria

BBCNEWS/TheHague ^ | October 20. 2015 | Anna Holligan

[Tennessee Nana]

A 14-year-old girl has gone missing from a Dutch asylum centre. Police say Fatema Alkasem was nine months pregnant and may be in need of medical care.

She is also thought to be a "child bride", and her case has highlighted the problem that the Netherlands faces in providing asylum for girls who married in Syria but are below the Dutch age of consent.

The government in The Hague is rushing to close a loophole in the asylum law which has so far allowed child brides to be reunited with their husbands in the Netherlands.

The practice has inflamed debate about how the Netherlands is responding to the refugee crisis, with some arguing it is condoning paedophilia.

'Foster care'

As many as 20 girls between the ages of 13 and 15 have been given legal permission to join their older partners at Dutch asylum centres, according to regional news channel RTV-Noord. The figures were reportedly obtained from a leaked immigration service document.

"A 12-year-old girl with a 40-year-old-man - that is not a marriage, that is abuse", says opposition Labour politician Attje Kuiken.

"We're talking about really young children, girls 12, 13 years old. I want to protect these children. The government should take them into foster care and protect them, because before the new law comes into force, they can still be subject to abuse."

The age of sexual consent in the Netherlands is 16 but migration minister Klaas Dijkhoff has told the BBC that the country currently recognises marriages involving young teenagers, as long as they are officially registered in their country of origin.

SNIP

The amendment means that family reunification applications will only recognise marriages if both partners are over the age of 18.

[Tennessee Nana]

Samo remembers meeting a young girl who was married at a refugee camp in Den Helder.

"I'm a refugee but I was working there in food distribution. I was very moved. I thought the guy was her little brother. When she said, 'this is my son', I was shocked. She was 14 years old. She accepted her fate, but it's wrong."

[Tennessee Nana]

Syrian “child brides” and international law

“Alarming increase” in number of child marriages within Syrian refugee communities in Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, says Save the Children

One key reason is to protect the girls from sexual assault and other hardship

It is also seen as safeguarding family honour

It reduces economic burden on refugee families

But child marriage threatens a girl’s physical and mental health

It is outlawed by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

The right to free and full consent from both parties is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 16)

[fhayek]

Sigh.

[SaveFerris]

[”A 12-year-old girl with a 40-year-old-man - that is not a marriage, that is abuse”, says opposition Labour politician Attje Kuiken.]

Well, I could tell of one story, written down, in hundreds of millions of places of a 6-year-old girl and a 49-year-old man, who then “consummated the marriage” when she was 9 years old and he was 52 years old.

[SaveFerris]

Could be written down in hundreds of millions of places since there are at least 1.5 billion claimed followers.

[Gene Eric]

This is obscene.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

[VanDeKoik]

“12-year-old girl with a 40-year-old-man - that is not a marriage, that is abuse”, says opposition Labour politician Attje Kuiken.”

Just see it as them expressing their love like gays do. Who are we to judge, remember?

[Kanzan]

Or, as then-Governor Sibileus said of statutory rape, “it’s just Romeo and Juliet.”

[samtheman]

The Europeans prove what we’ve been saying for a long, long time here on FR:

Liberalism IS a mental disease.

The Europeans (at least Western Europeans) are so far gone with the disease that they are literally unable to function in their own societies while packs of street-shtting, garbage-flinging, child-raping wild apes trash their cities and their civilizations.

Planet of the Apes.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

I see American child brides outside abortion clinics all the time - they are not really brides either, but pregnant underage girls. Look the other way, it’s the law. Collect the money.

[palmer]

That process is guided by many of the same considerations relevant to analysis of other constitutional provisions that set forth broad principles rather than specific requirements. History and tradition guide and discipline this inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries.

[palmer]

I guess I should add a sarcasm tag even though the above is the “law of the land”.

[Twinkie]

Would that be - Muh-HAM-head?
Whut an example!

[SaveFerris]

yep