Women's rights organizations fear that the marriage of minors aged nine and above will take on a legal form if the efforts of many representatives to amend the Personal Status Law in Iraq succeed.
A group of Iraqi parliament members from different blocs submitted a proposal to amend the Personal Status Law. Still, the parliament was forced in its session on July 24, 2024, to postpone discussing the amendment until further notice after a storm of criticism from activists and political forces.
Shokhan Ahmed, director of the Legal Aid Organization for Women in Sulaymaniyah - one of whose tasks is to defend women's rights - said, "The amendment takes Iraq steps backward. We are in favor of amending the law because it is old and requires changes to be made to it, but not in the manner stated in the proposed amendment."
The amendment proposes allowing marriage according to Islamic sects and not the law that set the age of puberty and marriage at 18, and that the courts ratify marriage contracts.
“Some sects allow girls to marry from the age of nine, this is the point we demand to reject,” said Ahmed, also a lawyer.
Some sects allow girls to marry from the age of nine, this is the point we demand to reject
According to the Iraqi Personal Status Law No. 188 of 1959, a girl must be 18 years old to marry but paragraph 1 of Article 8 of the same law states that “if someone who has completed the age of fifteen requests marriage, the judge may authorize it if he proves his/her eligibility and physical ability.”
In 2020 and 2021, Iraqi courts (excluding the Kurdistan Region of Iraq KRI) recorded over 4,000 divorce cases for women under the age of 15, and a report by the Supreme Judicial Council indicated that early marriage is one of the main reasons for the divorce spike.
Karwan Yarwais, a member of the Iraqi parliament, said, “The amendment proposal will not be returned to parliament in this form again after a large number of MPs objected and the great controversy surrounding it.”
About 200 MPs submitted a request to the parliament presidency to postpone the discussion of the amendment proposal.
“The amendment should be reconsidered and approved by all parties,” Yarwais added.
The amendment to Article 57 of the law proposes to “grant custody of the child to the father after divorce.”
“At a time when we are suffering from the problem of unidentified children, the parliament wants to take custody away from the mother after divorce…,” says Ahmed, noting that “there are efforts to deprive women of the achievements they have made.”
According to UNICEF, those girls getting married before the age of 18 are more likely to face violence, threats, and health problems than anyone else.
Every year, about 12 million girls under the age of 18 get married worldwide, according to UN figures, most of them in the Middle East.
This story was produced as part of the program to expand the role of women in covering environmental issues. The KirkukNow Foundation implements the program with the support and funding of the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.
