Mashnouq Refuses to Sign Civil Marriage Contracts

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq has said he would not approve the registration of contracts of civil marriage performed in Lebanon despite coming under pressure.

The minister told al-Akhbar daily published on Monday that his stance “would not change.”

“Civil marriage does not come through an administrative decision. The solution lies in coming up with the law that regulates it,” he said.

Al-Mashnouq's stance came after hundreds of activists marched on Sunday from the American University of Beirut campus to the interior ministry to demand support for civil marriage.

They accused the minister of blocking the official recognition of civil marriage contracts performed in Lebanon.

The activists claim that more than 40 contracts have been submitted to the ministry. But al-Mashnouq told al-Akhbar there are only 13 contracts.

Most faiths have their own regulations governing marriage, divorce and inheritance, and mixed Christian-Muslim weddings in Lebanon are discouraged unless one of the two converts.

In 2013, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel took the unprecedented step of registering the civil marriage contract of Nidal Darwish and Kholoud Sukkarieh.

Lebanese authorities have all along recognized civil marriages registered abroad, and it has become common for mixed-faith couples to marry in nearby Cyprus.

Rather than follow that route, however, Darwish and Sukkarieh decided to work with legal advisers to try to create new jurisprudence, despite no history of civil marriage in Lebanon.

Both had their sect, Shiite and Sunni Muslim, legally struck from their “sejel an-nufoos” or family register, to be wed as a secular couple under an article dating from the 1936 French mandate that makes reference to civil unions.