Forced marriage in Serbian legislation: Between legal tradition and new legal challenges

Abstract

The right to freely decide on the conclusion or dissolution of marriage traditionally falls into the corpus of human and civil rights which are guaranteed both at the international and the national level. In Serbian legislation, the implications of being deprived of this right, particularly as a result of coercion or duress, are two-fold: in the sphere of civil law, it is one of the legal grounds for voidability of marriage (Art. 38 of the Family Act) while, in the field of criminal law, it is qualified as a special criminal offence of forced marriage (Art. 187a of the Criminal Code). The initial text of the Criminal Code did not contain the incrimination of forced marriage, it was introduced by novelties in 2016, during the process of harmonising domestic legislation with the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention), which was signed and ratified by the Republic of Serbia. Thus, Serbia assumed an obligation to adjust and enhance its system for the protection of victims of violence. The author in this paper seeks to examine the criminal protection from forced marriage in its historical vertical, analyzing earlier criminal-law responses to this phenomenon, critically considering the capacities of positive law, but also dealing with possible directions for its further development.

Keywords

• forced marriage
• serbian criminal legislation