HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 15 (ACN) In line with the international conventions to which Cuba is part, the Preliminary Draft of the Code of Families strengthens the country’s will to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, to ensure the rights of children and adolescents and people with disabilities.
Yamila Gonzalez Ferrer, vice president of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba (UNJC by its Spanish acronym), told the Cuban News Agency that the proposed regulation, in its 22nd version, develops several institutions and within them ways of resolving conflicts that may arise, in accordance with the projections and postulates of these conventions and specific recommendations to the nation.
She mentioned as an example the worldwide demand for the prohibition of underage marriages, an aspect that in the current Family Code of 1975, although marriage is recognized as from 18 years of age, marriages of 14-year-old girls and 16-year-old boys are exceptionally authorized for justified cause, with the permission of mothers, fathers or other legal guardians.
However, sociological, psychological and demographic studies show that marriages and couples at those ages, mainly among girls, cause them to drop out of school, and often with much older people, which usually leads to inequality and teenage pregnancies, the PhD in Juridical Sciences stressed.
In order to strengthen the protection of this group, the bill proposes to raise the exceptional age for marriage from 14 to 16 years for girls, and that only the court authorizes it under very special situations, pointed out Gonzalez Ferrer, who is also a professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana.
The proposed regulation prioritizes, before any conflict, the best interest of the minors involved, for which the guardianship and protection institutions are consolidated and family foster care is presented as a valid and preferable alternative to institutional foster care, the specialist continued.
There are also specific articles aimed at the situation of children and adolescents with disabilities, and on the other hand, for the benefit of women’s autonomy, the possibility of agreeing on the economic regime of marriage and common-law unions is proposed, which seeks to allow women to determine the type of regime they want in these legal relationships, Gonzalez Ferrer concluded.
This week concludes the specialized consultations on the 22nd version of the Preliminary Draft of the Family Code, and then a more complete version of the proposal will be submitted to the National Assembly of People’s Power (Parliament) for its approval and after being approved, it will be submitted to popular consultation.