Saudi Arabia couples must take training course before marriage

Saudi Arabia is planning impose a compulsory marriage course before couples will be allowed to tie the knot, it emerged today. According to local media report, theKingdom’s rulers are hoping that a compulsory special training course on marriage will cut soaring divorce rates. The conservative Gulf Kingdom, which has one of the world’s highest divorce rates, has already issued legislation stipulating wedding couples must produce a medical certificate showing they are in good health before they are allowed to marry. “The cabinet is studying a draft law preventing any marriage before the couples pass a special training programme on marital life and ways to overcome any problems,” Saudi social affairs minister Yousef Al-Otheimeen. “The new law will be enforced on an optional basis in the first phase before it becomes mandatory as was the case with the condition for medical reports,” he told the papers. Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab economy, has one of the highest divorce rates, with an average 66 divorce cases a day in 2011. “An average 66 divorce cases were recorded daily in Saudi Arabia in 2011 and this is a very serious indicator that threatens the local society,” Iftikhar Dahneem, a well-known Saudi social expert said in a recent study. She said the main causes of the high rate include the wrong choice of the spouse, an educational gap, differences in habits and poor understanding of marital duties. Other factors include negligence, adultery, and violence. Official data showed nearly 148,000 couples tied the knot in Saudi Arabia in 2011, of which 31,000 are now divorced. “This means there was an average 406 marriages a day against 85 divorce cases,” said a report by the Saudi Ministry of Justice.