Iraqi authorities want to lower the marriage age for girls to 9 years

23 January 05:48

The Iraqi parliament passed a law on 21st of July that effectively legalizes child marriage. The amendments give Islamic courts more authority in family matters, including marriage and divorce. This was reported by Komersant ukrainskyi with reference to CNN.

The Iraqi parliament has passed three controversial laws, including amendments to the country’s personal status law, which, according to opponents, effectively legalize child marriage.

The amendments give Islamic courts greater authority in family matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. Activists argue that this undermines Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law, which unified family law and established guarantees for women.

Proponents of the changes, which have been championed by mostly conservative Shiite lawmakers, defend them as a means of aligning the law with Islamic principles and reducing Western influence on Iraqi culture.

The session of the Iraqi Parliament ended in chaos and accusations of procedural violations.

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Iraqi law currently sets 18 years as the minimum age of marriage in most cases. The changes passed on Tuesday would allow clerics to rule according to their interpretation of Islamic law, which some interpret as allowing girls to be married in their early teens – or as young as 9 years old according to the Jaafari school of Islamic law, which is followed by many of Iraq’s Shiite religious authorities.

Human rights activists say that the adoption of the amendments to the civil status law will have catastrophic consequences for the rights of women and girls due to the early marriage of girls, which violates their right to life in childhood and disrupts mechanisms of protection against divorce, custody and inheritance for women.

According to UN data for 2024, about 28% of women in Iraq are married before the age of majority. Before the law was passed, religious leaders could register marriages with girls with their father’s permission. At the same time, such a marriage was not considered official, and a girl could, for example, be refused admission to a maternity hospital.

Even before the amendments were approved, human rights activists emphasized that legalizing child marriage would significantly increase the risk of physical and sexual violence for girls.

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Дзвенислава Карплюк
Editor