Azerbaijan prepares amendments to women's rights legislation

Azerbaijan is preparing a package of amendments to the legislation regarding women's rights.

The Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Emin Aslanov told Trend that the Committee together with the expert group are preparing a package of amendments and changes to the Family, Civil Procedure, Penal Code and the Act on the Enforcement of Judgments. He added that the package will soon be discussed.

The amendments include creating the Public family court, increasing the marriage age, complexity of the divorce, creating the State Alimony Fund, the different sanctions for parents not paying alimony voluntarily, etc.

Aslanov said this package of proposals is being prepared on the basis of project "Monitoring of women's rights in the courts," conducted by the Committee. Within a time-span of six months, the organisation monitored about 100 trials in which women were one of the parties.

Interviews were conducted with lawyers and representatives participating in these trials to explore the theoretical and practical problems in protecting the rights of women. Moreover, the Committee examined the family law of various countries.

According to Aslanov one can conclude that the situation with divorce,alimony and property disputes considered in the courts is unsatisfactory. There are ample problems with women's appeals to the courts, the role of courts in preserving the family, providing high quality legal assistance through the state budget, executing the court decisions on alimony and other issues.

"The women, whose husbands went to various foreign countries to work there and did not come back, have lived in a state of de facto divorce for many years. The children face financial difficulties and moral problems in the majority of divorced families. One of the reasons is that women can not get alimony. At the moment, this is a serious social problem," Aslanov said.

The main executive administration of the Ministry of Justice had 22,268 cases on alimony within six months of 2009. It hits 37 percent of the total number of cases.

The practice shows that the majority of women deprived of their material, moral and legal aid are at risk of becoming victims of trafficking. As these women can not give proper education to their children, from an early age they begin to work and beg. They are also subjected to other forms of exploitation, Aslanov said.


/Trend/