‘The end of women and children’s rights’: outrage as Iraqi law allows child marriage
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The Iraqi parliament has passed a ‘terrifying’ law permitting children as young as nine to marry. Iraqi MPs and women’s rights groups have reacted with horror to the Iraqi parliament passing a law permitting children as young as nine years old to marry, with activists saying it will “legalise child rape”.
Under the new law, which was agreed yesterday, religious authorities have been given the power to decide on family affairs, including marriage, divorce and the care of children. It abolishes a previous ban on the marriage of children under the age of 18 in place since the 1950s.
“We have reached the end of women’s rights and the end of children’s rights in Iraq,” said the lawyer Mohammed Juma, one of the most prominent opponents of the law. The Iraqi journalist Saja Hashim said: “The fact that clerics have the upper hand in deciding the fate of women is terrifying. I fear everything that will come in my life as a woman.”.
Activists said they feared the law would now also be applied retroactively to cases filed in courts before it was enacted, affecting rights to alimony and custody. Raya Faiq, spokesperson for the feminist group Coalition 188, said: “We received an audio recording of a woman crying her eyes out because of the passage of this law, with her husband threatening to take her daughter away unless she gives up her rights to financial support.”.
