Azerbaijani officials against divorce float ‘compatibility checks’ before marriage

The State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs of Azerbaijan proposes mandatory ’compatibility checks’ for couples that desire to be wed.

State Committee Chairwoman Hijran Huseynova says this will help reduce the number of divorces.

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“We need to create a family psychologist institution, and make sure that citizens use this service,” Huseynova told Trend.

The creation of such an institution would be provided for by a ‘Family Strategy’ prepared by the committee.

What psychological problem does the committee want to resolve?

In Azerbaijan, young people very rarely live together before being married.

More and more couples are beginning to meet and spend leisure time together, but few live together before marriage, given that many in the country consider premarital sex to be morally wrong.

Therefore, it often happens that when two people get married, they don’t know each other very well. There are cases of marriage when a bride and groom have only seen each other from afar. These couples often find it very difficult to get along, and such marriages often end in divorce.

During the first half of 2018, 33,009 marriages and 8,538 divorces were registered in Azerbaijan – that is, one in four marriages ended in divorce.

The Ministry of Justice reports that spouses often indicate incompatibility of character, jealousy and domestic violence among the reasons for seeking a divorce.

Are checks really necessary before getting married? 

For several years now, there has been a law in Azerbaijan according to which couples are required to undergo a medical examination for a number of sexually transmitted and genetic diseases before getting married.

This is done so that the partners are informed about each other’s diseases and what diseases they might transmit to their potential children.

This law was introduced in 2015 and was met with public approval – the main reason is a very high incidence of the rare genetic disorder, thalassemia. The test for sexually transmitted diseases was thus considered to be a necessary measure.