The technical deputy of the Population Health Office of the Ministry of Health has announced the Ministry of Interior's involvement in the issue of white marriage.
Although there are no statistics on the number of white marriages in Iran, Mohammad Eslami, technical deputy of the Population Health Office and head of the Ministry of Health's Fertility Department, told ILNA News Agency that a headquarters has been formed in the Ministry of Interior, headed by the Deputy Minister of Interior for Social Affairs, which will examine the issue of white marriages, along with several other issues, and its reports will probably be announced in the near future.
White marriage is a way that some young Iranians have chosen to live together to escape the traditional and formal constraints of marriage. In this way of living together, the marriage is not registered in official records and is based on the agreement of two people.
The issue of white marriage has raised concerns among Iranian authorities in recent years. Officials do not consider this type of marriage to be religiously permissible. Now, Mohammad Eslami has expressed concern about the effects of white marriage on fertility rates, saying: "In white marriages, people usually do not have children and lose the time to have children."
He emphasized that if the number of people who have white marriages increases, the negative impact on the overall fertility rate will be greater.
The technical deputy of the Population Health Office of the Ministry of Health said that in white marriages, due to couples avoiding having children, the appropriate age for reproduction is also lost, and depending on how long this process continues, people face more problems.
According to him, after a while, when these people decide to get married and have children, they face increasing age and fertility problems at an older age, and in some cases, because they have passed the appropriate age, they cannot have children.
Mohammad Ismail Mutlaq, Director General of the Population, Family and School Health Office of the Ministry of Health, also said that "our duty is to promote healthy marriages, and in this regard, we work on marriages that have been registered."
He pointed out that this office is ready to provide advice to people applying for white marriages, saying that this type of marriage disrupts people's health.
This official also emphasized that there are no statistics on white marriages.
In September 2014, Siavash Shahriar, Director General of Social and Cultural Affairs of the Tehran Governorate, announced a plan called "Promoting Sustainable Families" to combat "white marriage," which was prepared based on population policies announced by the Leader of the Islamic Republic.
Source: Radio Zamaneh
