Divorce Leaves Tajik Women Out in the Cold

My mother-in-law put me and the children out of her house, as simple as that,” said Aziza, recalling what happened after her husband phoned home from Russia to announce he was divorcing her.

“She said that she didn’t want to see me there again and that I should go back to my parents.”

Like many women in Tajikistan, Aziza, now 24, moved into her husband’s family home after the marriage. Her brothers-in-law also lived there with their families, and tensions increased after her husband joined the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Tajiks who go to work in search of work.

He sent money home for a while, but then stopped, explaining that he had lost his job. After this, other family members accused Aziza of being a “scrounger” and because she was at home looking after two small children rather than earning her keep.

Now back in her parents’ home, Aziza does not feel welcome there, either, as her three brothers will soon get married and as custom dictates, bring their new wives back to live there.

Tajik law requires husbands to pay alimony when they divorce their wives. Unfortunately, Aziza is in the same position as many Tajik women – in the eyes of the law, she was never technically married at all. She and her husband went through the prescribed Muslim ceremony, but did not go to a registry office to have the marriage recorded and recognised by the state.

Lawyer Saodat Sharipova says unrecognised marriages are often the reason why women are deprived of any right to alimony or a share of joint property. But she adds that even when she has a state marriage certificate, a wife can still be excluded from claiming assets because the home belongs to the husband’s wider family rather than to the couple, and he may not have registered her as a resident there.

Zebo Sharifova, head of the League of Female Lawyers of Tajikistan, Women, says a high percentage of the cases that her organisation takes on involve women seeking help with a property claim following a divorce.

Gulnora Ahrorova, director of the Bovari Women’s Crisis Centre, confirms that many divorced women, even when they have a marriage certificate, are not sufficiently aware of their legal rights to pursue a claim by themselves.

“After the divorce, they are thrown out into the street without mercy, and they go along with this submissively,” she said. “They aren’t aware they can fight to defend their interests in court.”

Ahrorova recalls one recent case she dealt with, involving a woman called Mohtob from the Yavan district in southern Tajikistan.

Unlike many, Mohtob was legally married and had three children by the time she and her husband divorced. The family home was in the name of her father-in-law, and her husband’s relatives made it clear she had no right to live there any more.

Now she lives in a mosque, where she depends on hand-outs from members of the congregation.

“We helped her write a statement and told her which institutions she needed to apply to. And we provided her with a lawyer who is going to represent her in court,” said Ahrorova. “If the problem cannot be resolved locally, we will help her raise it at the national level.”

Ahrorova said that while women from the countryside are particularly vulnerable, since educational levels there tend to be low, there are also many cases in urban centres.

“Sometimes it emerges that the women does not have a passport [essential ID in Tajikistan], or a birth certificates for her children, and has no idea what she’s entitled to after a divorce,” she said.

One group of women who can never count as legally married in Tajikistan are those who become second or fourth wives. The post-Soviet period saw an upsurge in polygamous marriages sealed according to the traditional Muslim religious rite, although the practice continues to be forbidden by the state’s secular legal system.

For many women, such marriages are often a case of necessity. The fatalities of the 1992-97 civil war left an estimated 25,000 widows and many young women of marriageable age in need of economic support and social acceptance, and fewer men available as husbands. These days, there is still a dearth of young men, as hundreds of thousands are away working in places like Russia and Kazakstan.

A second wife has no legal rights to alimony, a share of property, or inheritance if her husband divorces her or dies.

Lawyer Qayum Yusufov says it is fairly difficult to bring a claim on behalf of a woman if she never registered the marriage with the state authorities.

“In cases like this, the woman will have to prove that she and her husband constituted a joint household. She’ll have to find witnesses,” he said. “It’s very complicated to help such women, although the courts do all they can to protect the rights of a women who’s been ruined and deceived and to convince the husband that it isn’t just his ex-wife who’s been left on the street, it’s also the mother of his children.”

Yusufov pointed out that under Tajik law, children enjoy equal inheritance rights regardless of whether they are legitimate or not.

The government of Tajikistan is aware of the challenges facing divorced women and is trying to address them.

“The rising number of divorces has forced us to come to the assistance of women who are often left unprotected after their marriage breaks up,” the head of the government’s Committee for Women’s Affairs, Khairinisso Yusufi, said at a press conference on January 11. “I’m very much relying on the president’s support on this issue.”

One of Yusufi’s recommendations is to require couples to sign a pre-nuptual contract as a condition of marriage registration.

The bulk of the population of Tajikistan profess Sunni Islam, with minorities of Ismaili Muslims, Russian Orthodox Christians and others. For Muslims, it is standard practice to have a marriage blessed by a mullah in a ceremony called “nikah”. In 2007, the authorities introduced a new law forbidding clerics to conduct religious weddings without seeing evidence that the marriage has been legally registered.

The legislation is believed to have curbed the number of unregistered marriages, but many believe more needs to be done to ensure it is observed. Yusufov, the lawyer, said it is essential to educate people about the rules.

“This law is being broken everywhere,” he said. “The mullahs are often taken in by parents and relatives who insist that the young couple will definitely go to the state registry office. But no one knows whether this actually happens.”

A leading cleric in Tajikistan, Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, recalled that in the early Nineties, as a member of the upper house of Tajikistan’s parliament of which he is still a member, he proposed that mullahs should be allowed to register marriages on behalf of the state, but the idea came to nothing.

Turajonzoda said that aside from the law, Islam requires men to make adequate provision for their wives during marriage and after divorce.

He says the blood relatives of new brides should ensure that written guarantees of property rights are in place before marriage is concluded.

“Pre-nuptual agreements came into common use in Europe just over a century ago, whereas the practice has existed in Islam for 1,400 years,” he said.

Even if a woman decides to become a second wife, and cannot register with the state authorities, Turajonzoda said Muslim law requires the husband to provide her with separate housing. Once again, he said, it is up to the bride’s relatives to obtain written confirmation from the groom that this property will fall to his wife and their children in the event of divorce or death.

“I realise it isn’t like that at all in practice these days, but a woman can prove her right to property by summoning the witnesses who were present at the religious wedding, and by establishing paternity if there are any children,” he said.