Iraq proposes law to lower marriage age for girls to 9, stokes controversy

A controversial bill that could potentially reduce the legal marriage age for girls to 9 and boys to 15 has been introduced in Iraq’s parliament.

The draft bill will further allow citizens to choose either religious authorities or the civil judiciary to decide on family affairs, sparking widespread concerns over how it could be used to undermine legal proceedings related to inheritance, child custody and divorce.

The Personal Status Law in the country stipulates the legal marriage age to be 18; that this bill could blatantly change that is the most feared facet of the proposal.

“Passing this law would show a country moving backwards, not forwards,” 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 conduct thousands of unregistered marriages each year, including child marriages, in violation of the current law.

Child marriage has been a concern in Iraq for ages. According to UNICEF, 28 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18. Additionally, 7 per cent of these women were married before they turned 15.

Amal Kabashi, from the Iraq Women’s Network advocacy group, told AFP that the amendment “provides huge leeway for male dominance over family issues” in an already conservative society.

The proposal was withdrawn from parliament in late July after facing severe backlash from lawmakers. On August 4, it was reintroduced with the support of Shiite blocs that holds considerable sway.

MP Raed al-Maliki, who introduced the bill, has denied any possibility of reducing the legal marriage age. The lawmaker, in the past, has been a harbinger of contentious proposals; he proposed criminalising homosexuality and sex-reassignment surgeries.

“Objections to the law come from a malicious agenda that seeks to deny a significant portion of the Iraqi population 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 roll back women’s rights and legitimise child marriage. A coalition of Iraqi female lawmakers also opposed the bill.

Earlier this year, demonstrators gathered in Tahrir Square, carrying signs that read “The era of female slaves is over” and “No to the marriage of minors.”

“Their most efficient tool for this distraction is to terrorize Iraqi women and civil society with a legislation that strips away all the rights that Iraqi women gained in modern times,” said Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, as quoted by the Middle East Monitor.