Politics

July 12, 2010

The High Cost of Talaq


Divorce is on the rise in Tajikistan, and many women are paying the price.

by Faromarz Olamafruz, Botur Kosimi, and Mahina Mehrdod
7 July 2010
ISTARAVSHAN, Tajikistan | For three years now, Zuhro Muhammadieva and her young son have lived in her parents’ house, ever since her husband divorced her because she and his mother did not get along.

The divorce was a simple-enough procedure. Muhammadieva’s husband simply repeated the Islamic term for divorce, talaq, three times to her. Unlike other predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan, Tajikistan has not banned this practice.

Muhammadieva said the couple lived in his parents’ house, and he, not much older than she, had no money or property she could claim.

So Muhammadieva, who entered into an arranged marriage at 18, left, empty-handed and pregnant, hoping that for the sake of their child her husband would come back for her.

That never happened. Her last hopes for a reconciliation were shattered when his dead body was brought back recently from Russia, where he had gone to find work. Muhammadieva said he was killed by Russian skinheads on his way to work one day.

"Even if he let me down and disgraced me, I still loved him because he was my husband,” she said. “I had a hope that maybe when my son grew up some day we would be together again, but now I’m destined to be alone. Bad people killed him and God will punish them eventually."

Now, lacking an education or skills, she and her son live in a small upstairs room of a house they share with her parents and her two brothers and their families. She does not have a job and relies on her parents for support.

Muhammadieva’s uncertain future is shared by a growing number of Tajik women as the divorce rate climbs. According to the State Committee on Women and Family Affairs, in 2009 the number of divorces exceeded the number of registered marriages for the first time, reaching 5,840, about 500 more than in 2008. The committee said 1,657 divorces were registered during the first quarter of 2010, but experts say the real numbers are higher.

Life for divorced women in Tajikistan is typically much more difficult than for their ex-husbands. Tajik law grants men and women the same rights in a divorce, but the reality is often quite different. Mariam Davlatova, chief editor of Ravzana ba Jahon (Window on the World), a magazine on gender issues sponsored by the OSCE mission to Tajikistan, cited recent research showing that almost 80 percent of women are denied the right to family property after divorce and husbands often shirk their responsibilities to their children and former wives.

To be poor by Tajik standards is to be among the world’s poorest. About half the country’s population lived on less than $2 per day throughout most of the last decade, according to the UN Human Development Program. While literacy rates for women and men in Tajikistan are roughly equal, the UNDP estimates that men in non-farming jobs have incomes about 50 percent higher than similarly employed women.

That is the grim reality facing, for instance, the almost 30 percent of women in the southern city of Kurgonteppa who are single heads of households, according to the nongovernmental organization Dilafruz, which focuses on women’s issues and which conducted the research cited by Davlatova. 

Some experts say the divorce rate is not rising as fast as the numbers would suggest. Instead, they say, a 2008 law requiring that all marriages and divorces be registered could account for the spike. But that would not explain why divorces have outpaced marriages.

Rayhona Haqberdieva, director of Dilafruz, cited several factors that are driving up the divorce rate. “If on the one hand, it’s poor economic conditions, on the other hand, it’s the fact that girls are being pushed to marriage at a young age when they are not psychologically ready yet,” she said, adding that massive labor migration and the ease with which a man can divorce a woman, including via a phone or text message, play a role.

“A lot of my high school friends got divorced not because they didn’t meet their husbands’ expectations, but because they couldn’t tolerate the harsh attitude and mistreatment from their mother- or sister-in-laws,” said Dilovar Habibova, a nurse from the northern city of Khujand who has seen several of her friends’ marriages dissolve. “It’s sad that frequently young girls who leave the warmth of their parents’ house aren’t accepted in the same warm manner or as an equal family member in their husbands’ houses.”

Mavluda Umarova, a lawyer who has represented women in divorce cases and who assists a civic organization called Citizens Rights in Istaravshan, linked the climbing divorce rate to a cluster of social ills. “Labor migration, poor economic opportunities, and a lack of social cohesion have taken a toll on family life in Tajikistan. Unfortunately, the government is not doing enough to promote the sustainability of healthy families, and the [committee on women and family affairs’] activities as the only nationwide agency dealing with family issues haven’t been effective yet.”

Ignorance of the law costs many young women dearly, according to Davlatova. “Legal awareness among the population is very low and most women don’t know their rights,” she said. “Even if some decide to claim benefits and their share of property from husbands, it’s generally a very long and difficult process to get any financial compensation for them in the end. In addition, separated wives are not all welcomed back to their parents’ homes and they are not encouraged to pursue their interests in courts.”

Even though talaq is rooted in Islamic tradition, that does not mean the faith condones its widespread use, according to Qobiljon Boev, a scholar at the Islamic Center of Tajikistan. On the contrary, Boev said, getting married and having children are among the essential duties of a believer, although he said talaq is permitted in rare cases.

The Committee on Women and Family Affairs recently has been pushing to make marriage agreements legally enforceable, in the hopes that fewer husbands will be willing to calltalaq if it means dividing up assets after a divorce.

Former committee chairman Khayrinisso Yusufi said, “Nearly all the divorced women that we encounter complain that their husbands left them without any way to support themselves. In fact, most prostitutes arrested during police raids say they were divorced by their husbands and left without any source of income or place to live with their kids, so circumstances forced them into the streets.”

But Davlatova said she is skeptical that families will ever consider a marriage contract as legally binding.

The answer, she said, could lie in educating young people about the realities and responsibilities of marriage.

 “We need to put the horse before the cart and address the problem before it arises,” she said.

Faromarz Olamafruz is a pseudonym for a journalist in Dushanbe. Botur Kosimi is a business consultant in Burlington, Vermont, and a contributor to neweurasia.netMahina Mehrdod is a journalist in Tajikistan.

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