Bride Kidnapping

IWPR reports on the problem of men kidnapping women to marry them in Georgia. While kidnapping and forced marriage are clearly bad things, I don't have anything original to say about them. I was, however, intrigued by the note that some young people used a kidnapping routine as a way of getting around the need for parental consent, which is an interesting and obvious way of using one customary practice to circumvent another.

Another interesting spin on matrimonial kidnapping is found in Tuareg tradition, where women own the tents and husbands have to move into them, but the women must join the man's clan. What often happens is that the man would move in with the woman, and after a brief period they would both be "kidnapped" by his kinsmen in a mock raid.

UPDATE: By the way, Georgia will be included in my October tour of the Caucasus. It should be an interesting time.