Cubans voting on a landmark liberalisation of family code

Cubans went to the polls to vote in a landmark referendum on whether to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption, allow surrogate pregnancies and give greater rights to non-biological parents.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel and his wife cast their ballots early at a Havana polling station in what he said is a needed revision of the country's 1975 Family Code.

The new code, he told reporters, "is a fair, necessary, up-to-date, modern norm that gives rights and guarantees to all people, to the full diversity of families, of people and of creeds."

Cubans aged 16 and over are being asked to vote simply "Yes" or "No" to the question: "Do you agree with the Family Code?"

The updated code would represent a major shift in a country where machismo is strong and where the authorities, in the 1960s and 1970s, sent homosexuals to militarized labor camps.

Official attitudes have since evolved, and the government has conducted an intense media campaign in favour of the new code.

But the referendum comes amid the country's worst economic crisis in 30 years and could provide an opportunity for some voters to voice opposition to the government.

The law needs more than 50 percent of the vote to be adopted, and dissidents have called on citizens to reject the code or to abstain from voting.

If approved, the new code would permit surrogate pregnancies, as long as no money changes hands, while boosting the rights of children, the elderly and the disabled.