Australian court acts to protect girl from arranged marriage

Summary of story from The Age, September 30, 2011

An Australian court has placed a 16-year-old girl on a nationwide airport watch list to stop her from being sent to Lebanon against her will for an arranged marriage.

In what a magistrate has called an ”act of great bravery”, the girl sought a court order to stop her parents taking her out of Australia to marry a man she had only met once.

The girl approached the Legal Aid Commission in Sydney after her parents organised the wedding despite her saying she did not want to marry the man.

In the Federal Magistrates Court in Sydney, magistrate Joe Harman placed the girl on the PACE Alert system at all points of departure from Australia.

Mr Harman praised the girl’s bravery in using the legal system to challenge her parents’ authority and ordered her parents not to assault, harass, threaten or intimidate their daughter, or question her about the proceedings.

Mr Harman also said the girl had displayed maturity not only by taking legal action to protect herself, but also in challenging part of the Lebanese Islamic culture in which she was brought up.

He said: ”It is not the right of any parent to cause their child to be married against their will, whether in accordance with the Australian law or otherwise.”