Iraq Parliament Moves to Legalize Marriage for Nine-Year-Old Girls

Organizers have planned protests in at least seven provinces on Thursday throughout Iraq in response to the introduction of amendments to a core family legal framework that could legalize child marriages, deprive widows of their inheritance, and facilitate sex slavery.

The Iraqi Parliament began to debate amendments to the Personal Status Law on Sunday that would, critics say, effectively dissolve the country’s universal standards to protect women and girls on matters such as consent to marriage, alimony, and custody of children by allowing men to opt out, choosing traditional Shiite or Sunni Islamic mandates, instead. While child marriages, sex slavery, and other abuses are rampant in modern-day Iraq, they are not technically legal. Iraqi law currently requires both men and women to be 18 years old to enter marriage, allows a woman to inherit her husband’s assets in the event of his death, and allows for unconditional inter-religious marriage.

The amendments to the secularized Personal Status Law, passed in 1959, would allow the relevant men in a marriage or proposed marriage to choose whether to apply Sunni sharia rules or Shiite sharia. It does not discuss other religions, such as Christianity, Zoroastrianism, or the Yazidi faith, which once boasted vibrant constituencies in Iraq but were almost entirely exterminated by the Islamic State (ISIS) “caliphate” in the past decade. Members of minority religions would most likely have to abide by the current form of the Personal Status Law.

Notably, the updated law would require Shiites to use a sharia code based on the Ja’afari school of Islamic law. The Ja’afari school provides that girls can enter a legal marriage at age nine and boys at age 15. It gives full custody of children of divorced couples to the fathers, unless the man chooses to give up custody to the mother, and includes a provision for an arrangement known as a “pleasure marriage,” which “is a temporary marriage that can last as little as an hour,” according to the Middle East outlet the Media Line. Human rights activists noted that the provision has the potential to be abused to facilitate prostitution and sex slavery, as a man can claim participating in those actions was merely a “pleasure marriage.”

Lawmakers are reportedly facing significant pressure from radical Shiite Islamist clerics and other power brokers to push the law through Parliament. Shiites are a majority in Iraq but have grown increasingly influential following the fall of Sunni socialist dictator Saddam Hussein with significant backing from neighboring Iran, the world’s most populous Shiite state and a premier state sponsor of terrorism. More recently, following the U.S.-backed destruction of the Islamic State “caliphate,” Shiite influencers gained prominence through the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of mostly Shiite, Iran-backed militias that were legally integrated into the Iraqi armed forces during the war with ISIS.

Speaking to the Media Line, an anonymous Iraqi “parliamentary source” described significant pressure on lawmakers from Shiite powers to amend the law to erode women’s and children’s rights.

“They are now negotiating with us—either we pass the law or no other law proposed by the rest of the blocs will be passed, and since they are the majority, they may pass this law, but they need more votes,” the source reportedly told the outlet.

The amendments proposed have prompted widespread outrage among human rights activists in the country. In Parliament, a coalition of over 15 women formed a coalition dedicated to defeating the amendments.

“Our rejection is not based on emotional issues, as some might claim, nor is it driven by external motives, but rather based on legal, religious, professional, and social observations, and stems from a sincere concern to protect the Iraqi family,” the lawmakers said in a statement this week, according to a translation by Emirati newspaper The National.

The Kurdish outlet Rudaw reported that protesters are expected to take the streets on Thursday in seven provinces to pressure lawmakers to trash the amendments. Human rights activists in the country condemned the updated law. It “violates human rights, especially women’s rights and it supports excluding women and girls from receiving inheritance and other rights. Not to mention that the amendment also allows girls to be married off before the age of ten,” one women’s rights activist told Rudaw.

Defenders of the amendments have insisted that Islam is the law of the land in Iraq and those who do not wish to engage in child marriages can simply not get married to a child – dismissing the core human rights objection to child marriages that no child can consent to marriage. Child marriages are not uncommon in Iraq despite the current law, Human Rights Watch revealed in a March 2024 report, but the Iraqi government does little to enforce the law.

“According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 28 percent of girls in Iraq are married before age 18,” Human Rights Watch observed. “According to the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, 22 percent of unregistered marriages involved girls under age 14.”

The Iraqi outlet Shafaq News quoted the head of the parliament’s Women, Family, and Children Committee, Dunya Al-Shammari, as saying, “the first clause of the proposal states that the current Personal Status Law will remain in effect and unchanged. However, individuals who wish to marry according to their sectarian beliefs will have that option.”

Al-Shammari said the updated legal code would enhance “freedom of choice.”

Shafaq also quoted a Shiite cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Khalil Al-Sanjari, who dismissed child marriage concerns on Wednesday, stating, “a girl is considered mature at nine years old thus marriage is permissible.”

“This is a general ruling and not obligatory, but as an Islamic obligation, she is considered accountable at nine and a man at fifteen. This varies based on the region’s climate,” the cleric added.

Similarly, Shiite cleric Sayed Jafar al-Mousawi told the Media Line, “when a woman reaches puberty and gets her period, she becomes a full woman, and she has the right to marry. And when a child reaches puberty, he has the right to marry too, so why do we refuse?”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

Editor’s Note: This article originally referred to Shiite Muslims as a minority in Iraq. It has been corrected to reflect that they are the majority population.