A new bill to lower the age of consent for child marriage for young girls from 18 to 9 years is being proposed in the Shia Muslim-dominated parliament, which is calling for an amendment to the country's \"personal status law\" to legalise child marriage.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This bill would not only lower the age of marriage, but would also deprive women of their rights to divorce, child custody and inheritance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Iraqi \"Personal Status Law\" of 1959 established a uniform legal framework for families in all sects. However, the new amendments propose that Muslim citizens can choose between the current secular-based law for the management of their personal affairs, depending on their sect. Relevantly, the right to choose is reserved to men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Human Rights Watch Iraqi researcher Sarah Sanbar said, \"It is explicitly written in the draft that if there is a dispute between couples, the husband's sect takes precedence. This removes many protections for women.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under current Iraqi law, the minimum age for marriage is 18. However, the amendments allow religious leaders to decide on marriage based on their own interpretation of Islamic law. Thus, many interpretations allow for marriage to underage girls, up to the age of 9.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other problem is that many Iraqi marriages, even between religious persons, are not officially registered. It is therefore difficult to keep track of exactly how many underage girls are married in Iraq each year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are currently 25 women MPs in the Iraqi parliament, but they are too few to prevent these laws from being enacted. MP Ali Nassif says the majority of men do not understand the problem with marrying underage girls. The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new bill would dramatically lower the age of child marriage in Iraq, putting the rights of girls and women at risk. Find out more about the proposed changes and their implications!<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politika","tag-irak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kozelkeletblog.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}