Mayolo Lopez / Reform Agency
Wednesday, March 15, 2023 | 18:59
Mexico City.- With 90 votes in favor and zero against, the full Senate approved classifying forced cohabitation of minors under 18 years of age — popularly known as child marriage — with a penalty of 8 to 15 years in prison and a fine of one thousand working days.
Data from the Population and Housing Census indicate that more than 230,000 girls between the ages of 12 and 17 were married together in 2020.
The most recent case surfaced in the mountains of Guerrero, where a minor was forced to marry, but the husband emigrated to the United States and the father-in-law threatened to stay with the young woman, and when she refused, she was arrested by the community authorities and was imprisoned along with her mother.
According to the approved opinion, it would be considered as “active subject who forces or induces, requests, manages or offers one or more of these people (under 18 years of age) to join informally or customarily, with or without their consent, with someone of the same condition or with a person over 18 years of age, in order to live together constantly and comparable to that of a married couple”.
“This forced cohabitation between an adult and a girl must end. It is a horror, we are among the first eight countries in the world in child marriage,” warned PAN senator Josefina Vázquez Mota.
For the PRI, Senator Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín noted that young women are forced to provide sexual favors and maintain the home. “This scourge occurs and it affects women fundamentally. So there is nowhere to go: we not only have to approve it, but also ensure its rapid dissemination and that its application does not depend on the mere interest of satisfying electoral needs.
The PT Geovanna Bañuelos explained that legislators had a duty to promote reforms that help eliminate practices that threaten girls, notably forced marriage of minors.
The senators also approved an opinion on the investigation, punishment and comprehensive reparation of femicide, to “respond to the need to adopt new measures that guarantee the integrity and protection of women.”
“It is urgent to legislate on femicide violence, especially for its investigation, its sanction and the comprehensive reparation of the damage,” said Senator Olga Sánchez Cordero.
According to the approved opinion, the penalties will be aggravated in those cases of femicide in which the victims are minors, pregnant people, older adults or with some type of disability.
Sánchez Cordero informed the plenary session that she felt “extremely calm” as a result of the fact that the femicide of Mariana Lima had been sentenced, a subject who had not been sentenced for twelve years.
