UFA, December 24. /TASS/. Members of the State Assembly (legislature) of the constituent republic of Bashkortostan, Western Urals, on Thursday considers lowering the age of consent and marrying age to 14 years old, the legislature’s press secretary Ilgiz Abdullin told TASS.
"The bill that opens up opportunities for marrying at fourteen will be considered in the first reading on Thursday," he said.
The Family Code of the Russian sets the unified marrying age at 18 years old but it also envisions a possibility of marriages at sixteen owing to special circumstances, for instance, pregnancy.
Along with it, marriages in which one of the newly-weds is in the age bracket of fourteen to sixteen years old are made in Bashkortostan regularly enough and their number, however small, is growing. The local registry offices registered eleven such marriages in 2013, fourteen in 2013, and twenty-one in 2014.
The initiative to bring the marrying age down to fourteen belongs to the regional Prosecutor’s Office. The powers to take decisions of permitting such marriages will be delegated to the State Committee for Justice on the condition of consent from the agencies of trusteeship and guardianship.
Konstantin Tolkachev, the speaker of the Bashkortostani legislature said the changes introduced into regional legislature "are not at all meant to stimulate early marriages."
"On the contrary, they spell out a clear legal pattern (for permitting such marriages) that goes into effect only in very special circumstances, like pregnancy or birth of a child," he said.
The regional ombudsperson for the rights of children, Milana Skorobogatova said earlier the legalization of marriages at fourteen would imply very scrupulous work with the young fiances on the part of various social security and guardianship agencies.