DENMARK CLAMPS DOWN ON REFUGEE CHILD MARRIAGES By David Frankenhuis
Denmark’s parliament yesterday passed a draft forbidding people to marry a person under the age of consent. In addition to this, Copenhagen decided it will no longer accept marriages that have previously been registered abroad if one of the persons involved in such a union is under the age of 18 years old. https://gatestone.eu/denmark-marriage/
Denmark initiated a similar law in February 2016, but unfortunately for the child brides, the Danish Immigration Service (DIS) decided to reunify them with their ‘husbands’ in September 2016, after the government had made a sudden U-turn on the issue. Copenhagen ‘justified‘ the reversal of its position by stating that preventing this type of child abuse might amount to an infringement of the fundamental refugees’ rights.
“In some of these cases it has been assessed that it would not be compatible with Denmark’s international obligations to maintain the separate living quarters, thus these couples have been offered to be housed together.”
But the Danish legal crusade against child marriage has been renewed, and is still based on reports from 2016 showing Danish asylum centres accommodate some 27 ‘married’ juveniles, writes The Danish Local. Previous accounts made mention of 14-year-old girls who entered Denmark as refugees and then became the brides of men that were more than ten years their senior.
Naser Khader, from the Conservatives, last year told Metro Xpress that he was “outraged” by the situation:
“That’s what you call ‘pedophilia’ when you have made a 14-year-old pregnant and are allowed to stay with the girl. The men should not be able to apply for asylum in Denmark. We can give asylum to the 14-year-old but should kick their grown men out. In Holland, you can, according to what I’ve been told, not be granted asylum if you have a child bride. So it must be in Denmark.”
The tightening of the laws on Thursday nevertheless still offer room for legal loopholes. A marriage will not be rejected when there’s “a compelling argument” for the union.
The above mentioned supposedly successful Dutch government is still struggling with the issue as well. Holland banned child marriages in 2015, but in the four months that followed the implementation of the law, some 60 Syrian-born child brides entered the Netherlands, according to RTL.
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