January 27, 2011
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AFP) - Any foreign man seeking to marry in Tajikistan will now have to provide an apartment for his bride, according to legal changes introduce Wednesday.
The Central Asian republic's parliament also voted to introduce a requirement on foreign men to spend at least a year in Tajikistan before they are allowed to wed.
Lawmakers said the changes were needed to help the impoverished state avoid having to incur the cost of providing for children of women abandoned by their foreign husbands.
"After a family breakup, the responsibility of raising the child falls on mothers and the state," said the president's parliamentary envoy Dzhumakhon Davlatov.
Officials said most foreign marriages involve men from neighbouring Afghanistan and Iran, although there has been a recent spike in the number of Tajik weddings involving grooms from Europe, the United States and Japan.
Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet republic, having been wracked by political instability since a 1990s civil war.
