IRAQ has effectively legalised child marriage, with girls as young as nine being able to marry after amendments to decades old laws.
The change on Tuesday has increased the interpretation of Islamic law – causing protests to erupt to prevent its “disastrous effects”.
The changes made to Iraq’s personal status law will permit teenage girls, as young as nine years old, to get married, going against the country’s previous age requirement of 18.
The age goes as low as nine because of Ja’fari school of Islamic law followed by many Shiite religious authorities in Iraq.
The Ja’fari school of thought focuses on various aspects of governance, legislation, and judiciary in the country.
It heavily relies on Ijtihad, which is an Islamic legal term referring to to independent reasoning by an expert in Islamic law.
Under these amendments, the regulations governing a marriage dispute will be determined by the particular religious customs rather than a decision made by a judge.
This would allow children as young as nine to marry under the eyes of the new laws.
These changes also give Islamic courts increased authority over family matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance.
Protestors have argued that this undermines Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law, which unified family law and established safeguards for women.
However, Intisar al-Mayali, a human rights advocate and a part of the Iraqi Women’s League, expressed concern, stating: “This infringes on the rights of these minors and undermines the legal safeguards related to divorce, child custody, and inheritance for women.”
She also declared that the change “will leave disastrous effects on the rights of women and girls through the marriage of girls at an early age”.
Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) said the proposals served to “terrorise Iraqi women and civil society with a legislation that strips away all the rights that Iraqi women gained in modern times.”
Voting for the changes erupted in similar chaos inside Iraq’s parliament.
A parliamentary official said anonymously: “Half of the lawmakers present in the session did not vote, which broke the legal quorum,.”
The nature of the voting process also caused controversy, as all three of the changes were voted on together even though they supported by different blocs.
This means that the amendments were voted on at the same time, even though different groups of voters supported different changes.
However, Raid al Maliki, an independent MP, said: “Regarding the civil status law, we are strongly supporting it and there were no issues with that.
“But it was combined with other laws to be voted on together… and this might lead to a legal appeal at the Federal Court.”
Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani commented: “[The laws are] an important step in the process of enhancing justice and organising the daily lives of citizens.”
SHIITE AND SUNNI SECTS
There are fears that this could lead to unchecked power in Iraq’s two religious sects: Shiite (also known as Shia) and Sunni.
Shiite believes that the leader of Islam should be a blood relative of Muhammad. They believe that Ali and his descendants are part of a divine order.
On the other side, Sunni believes that the leader of Islam can be any member of the community.
There are fears that these alterations could see both sects gain increased influence over marriages.
Those who supported the changes said that it was a key step in removing Iraq from Western influences.
This was mainly from primarily conservative Shiite lawmakers.
The revisions will allow figures from Sunni and Shia religious sects to finalise unions between people in law.
Initially, the Iraqi law stipulated that anyone getting married, who had to be over 18, must be “of sound mind”.
Now, however, a person’s religious sect would represent them in “all matters of personal status”, instead of a civil judiciary.
A key implication of this could be that, with the high number of unregistered and informal marriages in Iraq, people could become answerable to their sect’s doctrine.
The draft of the specific amendment reads: “When a dispute occurs between the spouses regarding the doctrine according to whose provisions the marriage contract was concluded, the contract is deemed to have been concluded in accordance with the husband’s doctrine unless evidence exists to the contrary.”
Consequently, figures from the offices of each sect would be able to finalise marriages, rather than the courts.
This may also see unregistered marriages – more than a fifth of which involve girls under 14 – legitimised by the state.
In more changes, the parliament also passed a general amnesty law seen as benefiting Sunni detainees.
This is seen to similarly benefit people involved in corruption and embezzlement.
