A controversial bill has been introduced in Iraq’s parliament that would reduce the legal age of marriage to nine years for girls and 15 years for boys.
The draft bill would allow citizens to choose between religious authorities or the civil judiciary to decide on family matters, raising widespread concerns about how it could be used to undermine legal proceedings related to inheritance, child custody and divorce.
The country’s Personal Status Law sets the legal age for marriage at 18; this bill would clearly change that, which is the most frightening aspect of the proposal.
“The passage of this law will show that the country is going backwards, not forward,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Sarah Sanbar said in an interview with news agency AFP.
Sanbar’s organisation warned earlier this year that religious leaders in Iraq perform thousands of unregistered marriages each year, including child marriages, in violation of current laws.
Child marriage has been a concern in Iraq for centuries. According to UNICEF, 28 percent of women aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18. In addition, 7 percent of these women were married before the age of 15.
Amal Kabashi, of the Iraq Women’s Network advocacy group, told AFP the amendment “provides huge leeway for male dominance on family issues” in an already conservative society.
The proposal was withdrawn from parliament in late July after a fierce backlash from lawmakers. It was reintroduced on August 4 with the support of Shia groups, which wield considerable influence.
MP Raed al-Maliki, who introduced the bill, has ruled out any possibility of lowering the legal age of marriage. MPs have, in the past, been the frontrunners of controversial proposals; they proposed criminalising homosexuality and sex-change surgery.
“The objections to the law stem from a malicious agenda aimed at depriving a significant part of the Iraqi population of their personal status determined by their beliefs,” al-Maliki said in a television interview.
Women’s rights groups are campaigning against the proposed law, fearing it could strip women of their rights and legalise child marriage. A coalition of Iraqi female MPs has also opposed the bill.
Earlier this year, protesters gathered in Tahrir Square holding placards that read, “The era of female slaves is over” and “Marriage of minors is forbidden.”
“Their most effective weapon to create this distraction is to terrorize Iraqi women and civil society through a law that takes away almost all the rights that Iraqi women have enjoyed in modern times,” Yanar Mohammed, president of the Women’s Freedom Organization in Iraq, said, according to the Middle East Monitor.