The marriage between two 12-year-old boys that scandalized Egypt

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Under a sea of ​​cell phones and crowds, two children try to dance.

They are surrounded by decibels of music and dozens of people who follow their awkward and timid movements.

.

The images capture the nocturnal marriage ceremony of a child marriage, a widespread phenomenon in the most populous country in the Arab world that returns to the public foreground.

The video of the ceremony, spread by social networks, was recorded in

, a popular neighborhood in the north of Cairo.

According to the authorities, who investigated the event, the minor lives with her grandmother, who confirmed the celebration but tried to downplay it by assuring that it was a

The stills also capture the moment in which the bride and groom exchange gifts, amidst the jubilation of some present who ignored the slightest measure of protection in the midst of the spread of Covid-19.

The families of both minors pledged in writing that

, a common practice to circumvent prohibitions.

"The main problem is that there is no article in the local family law that sets the age of marriage,"

, a researcher for the organization Equality Now

, complains to EL MUNDO

.

"Minors who are forced to marry are supposed to wait until they turn 18, which is when the marriage contract is registered.

. I refuse to call them father or mother. They are real perpetrators who they violate the human rights of children, "adds the activist.

13th place in child marriage

The governmental National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, in charge of the investigations into the case that has revived public attention on the phenomenon, recognizes that

"Families should protect their children from all kinds of harm because forcing them to marry as minors affects their innocence," they add from the entity.

According to official statistics,

.

But the figures are not very credible.

Unicef ​​places Egypt - whose population exceeds 100 million inhabitants - in the 13th position for child marriages.

"It is a very broad phenomenon that presents several modalities. One of them is known as tourist marriages that are not registered in any court," warns Abu Dayyeh.

A type of fleeting marriage linked to the summer months in which men from the Persian Gulf choose to move to Egypt, where they

.

Child marriage is also associated with gender-based violence, a true taboo in Egyptian society, and female genital mutilation that is still practiced illegally by health professionals.

The case of the Cairo children is not an isolated event.

Last month the authorities announced that they had managed to abort

in a village in Sohag province, in the south of the country, after a neighbor denounced the intentions of both families in a child protection hotline.

The investigation then revealed that the groom had already married another minor a year earlier and that, as a result of that unregistered relationship, the couple had a child who lacked a birth certificate.

Complicity of the authorities

Weddings often have the complicity of the "mazun", the public official in charge of registering the link, who plans the mission of avoiding legality, or the officials responsible for drawing up the marriage certificate, who consent to unions in which at least one of the spouses is a minor.

Earlier this year, the Egyptian Parliament launched a bill to criminalize child marriage.

The draft includes jail and

for those who agree to the marriage of minors.

The proposal, however, has not been finally approved in a legislature that has just concluded.

A few weeks before the attempt to promote the law, the Supreme Administrative Court of the Arab country declared that "orfi" marriages -

involving minors are a violation of children's rights.

The court also urged the authorities and the media to cooperate in prosecuting "the controversial practice" after child marriages performed by an imam in a northern province of the country emerged.

. What Egypt should do is comply with international conventions and pass legislation that prevents these violations," concludes Abu Dayyeh.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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