Family
Sharia and xeer govern family life; the 1975 Family Code is largely inoperative
The Family Code of 1975 remains on the books but is not generally applied. Marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance are governed by Islamic law and clan custom, administered through religious and customary forums.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Sharia courts, customary xeer assemblies and, where functioning, statutory courts.
Governing law
- Family Code 1975 — nominally in force
- Provisional Constitution 2012, Article 2 — Islam as state religion and sharia as a source of law
- Sexual Offences Bill — drafted 2018, not enacted
In practice
The 1975 Family Code was an ambitious secularising statute — equal inheritance shares, restrictions on polygamy, minimum marriage ages — and it was resisted at the time and has not been meaningfully applied since 1991. The operative law is Islamic personal status as interpreted locally, alongside xeer, the customary clan law under which compensation and settlement are negotiated between lineages rather than between individuals. That structure matters for a specific reason: in xeer, harm is a matter between groups and settled by diya compensation, so individual complainants, particularly women in sexual violence cases, may find matters resolved by inter-clan payment or forced marriage rather than by prosecution. A Sexual Offences Bill drafted in 2018 to address this was not enacted and a competing bill was proposed that would have weakened protections. FGM prevalence is among the highest in the world despite constitutional prohibition.