A controversial invoice has been launched within the Iraqi parliament that might decrease the authorized age of marriage for women to 9 and for boys to fifteen.
The invoice can even enable residents to decide on between spiritual authorities or the civil judiciary to determine on household issues, elevating widespread issues about the way it might be used to undermine authorized procedures associated to inheritance, youngster custody and divorce.
The nation’s Private Standing Regulation stipulates that the authorized age for marriage is eighteen; that this invoice may brazenly change that age is essentially the most feared aspect of the proposal.
“Passing this regulation would present that the nation goes backwards, not forwards,” mentioned Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Sarah Sanbar in an interview with the AFP information company.
Sanbar’s group warned earlier this 12 months that spiritual leaders in Iraq perform hundreds of unregistered marriages annually, together with youngster marriages, in violation of present regulation.
Baby marriage has been an issue in Iraq for hundreds of years. In accordance with UNICEF, 28% of girls between the ages of 20 and 24 have been married earlier than they turned 18. Moreover, 7% of those girls have been married earlier than they turned 15.
Amal Kabashi, of the Iraqi Ladies’s Community advocacy group, instructed AFP the modification “provides huge leeway for male dominance over household issues” in an already conservative society.
The proposal was withdrawn from parliament in late July after dealing with a extreme backlash from lawmakers. On August 4, it was reintroduced with the assist of Shiite blocs which have appreciable affect.
MP Raed al-Maliki, who launched the invoice, has denied any chance of decreasing the authorized age of marriage. The lawmaker has been a proponent of controversial proposals prior to now, proposing to criminalise homosexuality and intercourse reassignment surgical procedure.
“Objections to the regulation stem from a malicious agenda that seeks to disclaim a good portion of the Iraqi inhabitants their private standing decided by their beliefs,” al-Maliki mentioned in a tv interview.
Ladies’s rights teams are campaigning towards the proposed regulation, fearing it may roll again girls’s rights and legitimise youngster marriage. A coalition of feminine Iraqi lawmakers additionally opposed the invoice.
Earlier this 12 months, protesters gathered in Tahrir Sq. with indicators studying “The period of slave girls is over” and “No to youngster marriage.”
“Their only software of distraction is to terrorize Iraqi girls and civil society with laws that strips Iraqi girls of all of the rights they gained in trendy instances,” Yanar Mohammed, chairwoman of the Group for Ladies’s Freedom in Iraq, was quoted as saying by Center East Monitor.