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| Africa North | |
| Tripoli government to tighten rules on marrying foreigners | |
| 2015-10-11 | |
| [Libya Herald] The Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... -based "government" plans to tighten rules permitting Libyan citizens marrying foreigners, its social affairs minister, Samira Al-Ferjani, has announced. Plans are in hand, she said, to set a committee in each municipal area to which Libyans hoping to marry foreigners must apply for permission. If granted, it would then issue a marriage certificate, recognised by the Libyan authorities and ensuring the spouse and children had the same rights as ordinary Libyans. According to Ferjani, who said that a committee had been studying the issue for ten months, there had been too many problems relating to mixed marriages. Numerous marriage certificates had been forged, she said, and in cases where the marriage had not been registered at an embassy abroad, the children's rights in Libya were then affected. There were concerns too, she added, relating to Libyans marrying non-Sunni Muslims, mentioning specifically those who had married "Alawites, Druze and Shiites". It was causing problems, she claimed. There was a need to "preserve the Libyan and Islamic identity," she added.
In 2013, the Ministry of Social Affairs endorsed the Grand Mufti's call banning women from marrying foreigners. Sheikh Saddeq Al-Ghariani based his call on "several complaints" he said he had received that Shiite and Druze men from Iran and Syria were "taking advantage of the loose security grip in Libya and the country's chaotic situation in the public administration". He had asked the government not to approve marriage contracts between Libyan women and non-Libyan men for fear that the women would be misled into marrying men from other sects, "even if the men are Muslims or Arabs". Apart from the issue of Libyan women marrying Syrians or Iraqis, there certainly have been numerous reports of foreign women living in Libya reduced to poverty after their Libyan husbands abandoned them. There have also been cases where beacuse the marriage was not registered under Libyan law the children cannot go to school, receive free medical treatment, have a passport or any other right flowing from citizenship. | |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 Nothing new here. Those rules were in place much earlier. A Libyan woman wrote a marriage contract on me and she said that it would have to go to court and she would have to explain why she was marrying a foreigner instead of one of those fine upstanding young Libyans. Because she was divorced and over 35, her pickings were slim to use her words, but the court didn't see it that way. That's when my boss shipped me back to the US when he got wind that the family of the woman was VIOLENTLY opposed to her marrying an American... |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2015-10-11 11:23 |
| #1 Have to stop that long list of foreigners trying to obtain Libyan "green cards" through marriage. |
| Posted by: Sven the pelter 2015-10-11 00:06 |