The French parliament's upper house yesterday backed a proposal to raise the minimum age at which women may marry from 15 to 18, belatedly amending a century-old law that experts say encourages the misery of arranged marriages.

　　According to article 144 of France's civil or Napoleonic code, "The man who is not yet attained the age of 18, and the woman who is not yet 15, may not enter into wedlock." Like roughly half of the code's 2,281 articles, it has not changed since it came into force in March 1804.

　　In most western European countries, the minimum age for marriage is the same for both sexes, generally the age of majority. But many countries, including Britain, allow exceptions. Tunisia, Senegal and Morocco have modified their civil codes in recent years.

　　Civil rights lawyers in France have argued that its civil code breached the UN convention on the rights of the child, adopted in 1989 and ratified by Paris in 1990. Article two of that convention demands that signatories "take all appropriate measures to protect children from any form of discrimination".

　　A government advisory body, the high council on integration, estimated in 2003 that as many as 70,000 adolescents, almost all first or second-generation immigrants, were living in arranged marriages.

　　The justice ministry says its figures indicate some 1,200 minors were married in France in 2004, but admits that many more are taken abroad each year to wed someone they may never have met.

　　The amendment, approved by an overwhelming cross-party majority, is also backed by the justice minister, Dominique Perben, who said allowing girls to marry at 15 was "manifestly a false freedom".