RIGHTS-BENIN: New Family Code Outlaws Harmful Traditional Ways

By Ali Idrissou-Toure Reprint | | Print |

Ali Idrissou-Toure

COTONOU, Jun 19 2002 (IPS) - Benin’s new “Family and Personal Code”, passed by Parliament this month, accords women new rights and outlaws traditional practices, such as forced marriage and wife inheritance.

The code, adopted in a 44-0 vote, culminated a month of frenzied work in the National Assembly. Nearly half the deputies were absent during the voting.

Wife inheritance, which is practised in much of Africa, is the tradition where a widow becomes the wife of one of her husband’s brothers, or relations. The rationale behind this ancestral custom is to keep the widow within her husband’s family and to prevent her from having children with a ‘stranger’.

Women’s non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have described this practice as “abusive and degrading”.

The new code also gives women the right to keep their surnames on all their official documents, in addition to their husbands’ names.

Women’s NGOs exerted tremendous pressure on the National Assembly, which has been in session in Porto-Novo, the country’s administrative capital, since Apr 12, to pass the bill. The bill had been blocked in parliament for seven years.

Benin’s 1931 Customary Law and 1958 Civil Code are both outdated. They also “contradict all modern legal instruments which guarantee the rights of women”, according to Pascaline Ahouilihoua Anani, president of the Benin-based Network for the Integration of Women in African NGOs and Associations.

During the debate in parliament, Rosine Soglo of the Benin Renaissance, an opposition party, criticised the provision that placed civil ceremony over religious marriage. The bill specified that only marriages conducted by a registry official (Mayor’s office) would enjoy legal status.

It also set marriage age at 18 for men and 16 for women.

Marie-Elise Gbedo, who ran for president in 2001 and became the first woman ever to compete for the top job in Benin, expressed her views on Golfe-FM, a private radio station based in Cotonou. “It’s very important that Beninoir people understand that anyone who only gets married in a religious ceremony has no legal protection and will not be considered married.

“Religious marriages alone do not give one legal status. In such instances, if one’s spouse should die, the other would have no right whatsoever to his or her property,” she warned.

Following public outcry, the deputies amended the provision, allowing couples to be married in a religious ceremony prior to civil registration. As part of her contribution to the debate, Beatrice Lakoussan of the ruling party called for laws that would prevent “60-year-old men from marrying 12-year-old girls”, under the guise of religion.

Lakoussan, a judge, is the former wife of Beninoir president, Mathieu Kerekou.

Religion plays a major role in Benin, where followers of indigenous beliefs make up 68 percent, Christians 17 percent and Muslims 15 percent of the country’s six million people.

Some legislators have suggested that the voluminous document, which contains 1,033 articles, should be translated into the country’s main languages — Fon, Yoruba, Bariba and Dendi — so that it could be accessible to the average citizen.