The government will ban marriage between close relatives

The government presented a bill on Friday to ban marriages between close relatives such as cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.

Friday 3 May at 12:06 p.m

The Ministry of Children and Families proposes to amend the Marriage Act on the prohibition of marriages between close relatives. The proposal follows up on a request resolution from 3 November 2020 in which the Storting asked the government to present a bill banning cousin marriage.

The purpose of the ban is primarily to prevent health damage in children. It is also a political goal to counteract forced marriage and negative social control, emphasizes the ministry, which assumes that the ban will be able to contribute to precisely this.

– Biological relationships between, respectively, an aunt or uncle as one party and a nephew or niece as the other party, are a closer relationship than cousins. The ministry therefore proposes that this group should also be covered by the ban, says a press release from the ministry.

In order to prevent circumvention of the ban, it is proposed that marriages concluded between cousins ​​under foreign law should not be considered valid if at least one of the parties was a Norwegian citizen or permanent resident in Norway at the time of the marriage. The ban will not cover marriages previously entered into abroad by persons who were not Norwegian citizens or resident in Norway when they married.