The Temporary Wife: Luca and Valentina's Story: 2 (The Windsors)

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For further guidance on assessing the availability of state protection, see the instruction on Assessing Credibility and Refugee Status and the Country Policy and Information Note on Iran: Actors of Protection. Decision makers should also refer to the instruction on Gender issues in the asylum claim and Processing children’s asylum claims. 2. Consideration of issues 2.1 Credibility Women in Iran are subject to restrictions imposed by both their family and society. The country has a patriarchal culture that gives men power over women and property. According to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, the subordinate status of women in Iranian society is perpetuated by two main factors: patriarchal values and attitudes favouring the norm of male supremacy and a state-promoted institutional structure based on hard-liner interpretations of Islamic principles. While the former is a universal phenomenon, the latter is particular to Iran’s gender politics and policies prevalent in the country since the 1979 Revolution. Both factors emphasize the notion that a woman’s role is primarily that of a wife and a mother, which is used as justification for restricting women’s public lives.’ [footnote 91] Book 7, Section 2 of the Civil Code outlines the provisions relating to dissolution of marriage and states under Article 1120 that ‘Marriage may be dissolved by cancellation, by divorce, or by waiver of the remaining period in the case of a temporary marriage.’ [footnote 50] The Civil Code goes on to describe the circumstances under which a marriage may be dissolved [footnote 51].

A judge should cautiously analyse both aspects and seek various expert opinions regarding the mental, physical, and social abilities of the child before being in a position to issue the permit… But this standard of review is not prevalent. The practice of temporary marriage is connected to problematic issues including unregistered marriages and specially, child/early marriages in Iran, as young women have been reported to be one of most prominent groups who are negatively affected by temporary (and sometimes unregistered) marriage. Temporary marriage is, for instance, sometimes used to legitimize early marriage with the approval of the parents.’ [footnote 25] The reported case TB (PSG, women) Iran [2005] UKIAT 00065 (09 March 2005), heard 30 November 2004 and promulgated 9 March 2005, noted in relation to women forming a PSG in cases concerning forced marriages: According to Quran (2:221) Muslim men are free to marry fellow-Muslim women but they are forbidden to marry women from idolatrous communities unless they embrace Islam. They are, however, expressly allowed to marry upright women from the ahl-al-kitab, “people of the book”, meaning Jews and Christians, and, according to Shi’a, Zoroastrians, who are followers of the divine religions with a revealed scripture (5:6).The fundamental difference between Islamic schools and the international human rights system regarding early marriage is the definition of childhood. While both systems recognize maturity as the end point of childhood, their understanding of it differs widely. Islamic schools themselves are not in complete agreement on the age of maturity (buluq). Given the characteristics used by Shi’i scholars to define the concept, maturity mainly relates to sexual development and is intertwined with puberty.’ [footnote 10] Forced marriage is prohibited under Iranian law as both parties must consent [footnote 127] [footnote 128]. 6.2 Minimum age for marriage

The country information in this note has been carefully selected in accordance with the general principles of COI research as set out in the Common EU [European Union] Guidelines for Processing Country of Origin Information (COI), April 2008, and the Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation’s (ACCORD), Researching Country Origin Information – Training Manual, 2013. Namely, taking into account the COI’s relevance, reliability, accuracy, balance, currency, transparency and traceability. UNICEF data on Iran, based on 2010 figures, show that 3% of women (aged 20–24 years) were first married before 15 years of age and 17% before 18 years [footnote 145]. Where a claim is refused, it is unlikely to be certifiable as ‘clearly unfounded’ under section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. that the general humanitarian situation is so severe that there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of serious harm because conditions amount to inhuman or degrading treatment as within paragraphs 339C and 339CA(iii) of the Immigration Rules / Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)In contemporary Twelver Shi’a Islam in Iran, temporary marriage stays a legal and religious conjugal union between an unmarried woman and a married or unmarried Muslim man (due to laws that sanction polygamy), which is contracted for a fixed time period in return for a set amount of money that the woman receives. The practice of temporary marriage is not only sanctioned, but also encouraged in Shi’i discourses. This is because any form of extramarital sexual relationship is prohibited by Islamic law and is culturally interdicted. Temporary marriage is, in this context, promoted as a halal alternative and an Islamically-sanctioned way to avoid premarital, extramarital and other “illegitimate” sexual relationships.’ [footnote 24]

From the author of The Wrong Bride and Forever After All comes an angsty and steamy marriage of convenience romance featuring a billionaire boss and his secretary.When Luca Windsor’s secretary quits her job shortly after he’s forced into an unwanted engagement arranged by his family, he sets out to solve both problems…. by secretly marrying his secretary instead.The rules are simple:1. Don’t fall in love2. Keep their marriage a secret at work3. Share a bed every nightIt was meant to be a straightforward and mutually beneficial deal, but with each day that passes, it becomes clearer to Luca that the only thing Valentina wants is the one thing he can never do.Letting her go. The Temporary Wife (The Windsors, #2) by Catharina Maura – eBook Details The Danish Immigration Service report of 2018 noted, according to various sources, that a person may marry without their family’s consent if a court approves it [footnote 114]. However, ‘The father’s legal permission is necessary if a virgin woman wants to marry with the consent of her family. In the absence of the father, the paternal grandfather has the legal capacity to give consent to the marriage. If a woman has a record of previous marriage, no consent by father or grandfather will be required when entering into a marriage.’ [footnote 115] The 2013 IHRDC report noted that ‘… the natural guardian (vali-ye-qahri: father or paternal grandfather) has the right to marry for and on behalf of his minor daughter, in compulsory marriage. While in other Islamic schools the natural guardian has the right to marry even for his adult daughter, in Hanafi and Shi’ite law, only minor girls may be contracted in compulsory marriage, and adult women may conclude their own marriage contracts.’ [footnote 112] However, the report also explained that ‘… even adult women are not completely free to marry for the first time at their own discretion. There is still a restriction which affects their freedom of marriage as long as they are a “virgin”.’ [footnote 113]Article 1130 of the Civil Code states ‘In the following circumstances, the wife can refer to the Islamic judge and request for a divorce. When it is proved to the Court that the continuation of the marriage causes difficult and undesirable conditions, the judge can for the sake of avoiding harm and difficulty compel the husband to, divorce his wife. If this cannot be done, then the divorce will be made on the permission of the Islamic judge.’ [footnote 54] This note provides country of origin information (COI) and analysis of COI for use by Home Office decision makers handling particular types of protection and human rights claims (as set out in the Introduction section). It is not intended to be an exhaustive survey of a particular subject or theme.

According to journalist and author, Ramita Navai, speaking in 2016, ‘… arranged marriages were more common in rural areas where there was more pressure to marry whoever your parents tell you to… but there is rarely pressure to marry someone you don’t want to marry in the cities.’ [footnote 118] 5.3 Kurdish marriages Normally, the mother cannot be a child’s legal guardian in Iran even if she has the right to raise the child in her home in practice. Legal guardianship, and therefore the power to make decisions about important matters pertaining to the child, such as marriage, financial arrangements and international travel, automatically belongs to the father. The mother can generally only gain legal custody of her children in the absence of the children’s father and paternal grandfather.’ [footnote 67] Shamin Asghari noted in a paper on early marriage, regarding the influence of Islam in Iranian law, that: A 2019 report published in the Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (EJIMEL) stated:An article in IranWire, dated February 2020, considered ‘One of the main reasons for the prevalence of child and forced marriages in Iran is the poverty and economic desperation of poor and large families. Marrying daughters means lowering family costs. Studies show that the greater the economic prosperity and the higher the level of welfare, the lower the rate of forced marriages.’ [footnote 143] According to the social worker Z. Mousavi, changing the law will not prevent child marriages alone. She says many child marriages are not registered until the girl reaches the legal age. “Traditional families are more mindful of religious aspects of the marriage,” she says. “As long as the religious ceremony is done, they do not care if it’s registered or not. The marriage is registered after the girl reaches the legal age and by then the court and the judge’s permission become irrelevant.” The USSD’s Bureau of Consular Affairs provided details of marriage certificates (Sanad-e aghd, Sanad Sanad-e ezdevaj) and divorce certificates (Sanad-e Talagh), including a description of the documents, issuing authority and the procedure for obtaining such certificates [footnote 82]. The USSD also noted ‘In addition to marriages and divorces having their own documentation, the information should also be recorded in both parties’ shenasnameh (birth certificate) documents.’ [footnote 83] According to the latest official statistics inside Iran, more than 29,000 marriages were registered in 2016 that have taken place between brides who were younger than 15 and boys/men of different age groups. The largest age group of men who married girls under 15 years was the 20–24 age groups, making up over 16,900 registered marriages out of all marriages; this was followed by the age groups 25–29, making up over 7,000 registered marriages. Furthermore, because of the issue of unregistered marriages that… takes place in connection to child marriage, these reported statistics usually do not include information on unregistered and temporary marriages.’ [footnote 158]