Spain announced on Friday it is raising the minimum age for marriage from 14 to 16, while opening consultations to increase the age for consent to sex, which now lies at 13, so as to combat child abuse.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s right-leaning government announced its decision to raise the minimum ages for marriage and sex in Spain, which are now among the lowest in the world, after a weekly cabinet meeting.
The reforms are part of a broad plan approved by the government to protect children from abuse and exploitation, to be funded with a budget estimated at 5.2 billion euros (US$6.7 billion) over the next four years.
Spanish legislation allows a child to enter into marriage with a court’s permission as young as 14. Defenders of children’s rights fear that at such a young age, minors, even if only a small number, may be forced into unions.
“Although the age to enter into marriage in our country is 18 years, the law does allow in certain circumstances for marriage at 14. We are going to raise that age to 16,” Spanish Social Services Minister Ana Mato told a news conference.
“We also propose to raise the age of sexual consent, which is now 13 years, the lowest among countries in our region, so as to avoid adults abusing minors and to fight more effectively against pedophilia,” she said.
To set a new age limit for sexual relations, the Spanish government said it would open a period of consultations with political parties and children’s organizations.
The Spanish office of the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, hailed the reforms.
“We welcome the measures that raise the age of marriage and the revision to the age of sexual consent,” Gabriel Gonzalez-Bueno, head of childhood policy at UNICEF Spain, said in an online statement.
He also praised a decision to include a report on the impact on children of all planned legislation and regulations, a measure for which he said UNICEF Spain had long campaigned.
The Spanish child protection plan also aims to battle child poverty, as the country suffers a recession that has left 26 percent of the workforce out of a job, with 1.83 million households in which every potential worker is unemployed.
The economic crisis has left many people unable to afford rent and mortgages, leading tens of thousands of families to lose their homes.
Gonzalez-Bueno said the plan lacked sufficient focus on the impact of the crisis on children and their families.
“The economic context and budget context affects the success of many aspects of the plan,” he said.
In line with the recommendations of the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Spanish government also revised the drinking age to 18 across the country. In most Spanish regions the minimum age for consumption of alcohol was already 18, but in the northern region of Asturias it was 16.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS