Cohabiting couples in Burundi have until the end of the year to get married or face legal consequences.<\/p>\n
The government order comes after President Pierre Nkurunziza launched a campaign “to moralise society”.<\/p>\n
A government spokesman said a crackdown on informal relationships was needed to combat a population explosion.<\/p>\n
He said too many schoolgirls were getting pregnant and men were taking advantage of women by cohabiting with several simultaneously.<\/p>\n
Burundi has been in crisis since 2015 when Mr Nkurunziza, a born-again Christian, announced he would run for a controversial third term.<\/p>\n
We want order<\/strong><\/p>\n Interior ministry spokesman Terence Ntahiraja told AFP news agency that church and state-sanctioned weddings were the solution to the country’s population explosion – and a patriotic duty.<\/p>\n “We want Burundians to understand that everyone is responsible for his life, we want order in this country,” he said.<\/p>\n “All this is done within the framework of the patriotic training programme,” he said, referring to an initiative launched by President Nkurunziza.<\/p>\n It is not clear exactly what sanctions those not tying the knot will face.<\/p>\n However, one farmer quoted by AFP said local officials had already threatened him and his partner with a fine and said any child born out of wedlock would not qualify for free education or medical treatment.<\/p>\n The farmer, named only as Pierre, said he had not married because he could not afford the bride price demanded by his partner’s family.<\/p>\n Hundreds of people have since died since Mr Nkurunziza launched a bid for a third term. But the country had been relatively calm in recent months.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cohabiting couples in Burundi have until the end of the year to get married or face legal consequences. The government order comes after President Pierre Nkurunziza launched a campaign “to moralise society”. A government spokesman said a crackdown on informal relationships was needed to combat a population explosion. He said too many schoolgirls were getting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[2181,3],"class_list":["post-323081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-odd","tag-burundi","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=323081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=323081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}