Iraq | Marriage of 9-year-old girls soon legal?

Iraq is preparing to allow men to marry 9-year-old girls. Human Rights Watch denounces what it describes as “child rape” while Niyaz Abdullah, an Iraqi journalist, speaks of a “pedophile law”.

For Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, this is another example of the worrying decline in women’s rights in a large number of countries.

Since 1959, the Iraqi “personal status” law has set the minimum age for girls to marry at 18 years. Exceptionally, a judge can approve a marriage at the age of 15.

But on September 17, the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq approved, in second reading, a proposal to reform this law which would now allow citizens to choose for themselves whether they want their family affairs (marriage, divorce, inheritance) ) come under the control of the State or religious authorities.

However, in Parliament, it is the Shiites who are the majority and in the eyes of some, the minimum age for marrying a young girl should be set at 9 years.

A “sickening” desire, denounces Human Rights Watch

“The decision by politicians to legalize child rape – because, let’s be frank, that’s what the euphemism ‘child marriage’ is – is sickening,” writes Andrew Stroehlein, media relations director at Europe, on behalf of Human Rights Watch.

To maximize their chances of passing their legislative amendment, Shiite parliamentarians promised in exchange to their Sunni counterparts the release of prisoners associated with the Islamic State armed group, Niyaz Abdullah, Iraqi journalist and winner of the International Press Freedom Prize in 2022.

In other words, she continues, “give us sex, I’ll release the terrorists.” Islamic State members violated [en Irak] girls aged 9 or 10. And Iraq itself will pass a law which authorizes marriage with girls under 18 years old. »

Sarah Sanbar, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch, sees it as much a legalization of child rape as an illustration of the poor democratic health in Iraq.

Because this legislative modification, which gave rise to demonstrations, has indeed been decried by many Iraqis who would even be in the clear majority to oppose it, continues M^me Sanbar.

In any case, this is what a poll conducted by the Iraq polling team between August 13 and 15 suggests. According to the results published on the Shafaq News website, 73% of respondents would be opposed to the planned legal change.

Despite this, everything indicates that it will pass. “In Parliament, there will not be enough opponents to prevent its promulgation,” explains M.^me Sanbar.

Setbacks in the rights of women – in this case, of little girls – are increasing almost everywhere, she observes. “In many places around the world, we see increasing attacks on women’s rights and many attempts to limit women’s right to control their bodies,” even in the United States, she says.

For recognition of “gender apartheid”

France-Isabelle Langlois, general director of Amnesty International for French-speaking Canada, also notes this, evoking this Iraqi example and, closer to home, the repeated attacks against abortion in the United States.

Amnesty International did not pose the issue in terms of child rape, “but it comes down to that,” says M^me Langlois.

The attacks on women’s rights are so serious in so many countries that Amnesty International is calling for international law to “recognize the concept of gender apartheid,” explains Ms.^me Langlois.

Sami Aoun, professor emeritus at the University of Sherbrooke and specialist in the Near and Middle East, recalls that the legal modification envisaged in Iraq is “a lamentable regression” compared to the spirit of the laws at the time of the founding of the Iraqi Republic, in 1958.

At the time, Mr. Aoun observes, “the regime was rather left-wing and engaged in a certain political modernization.”

Saddam Hussein had also “established a semi-secular system”, with “rather modernist” views on the family structure.

Today, power in Iraq is in the hands of “especially Shiite, ultra-conservative religious parties, whose objective is to promote their retrograde ideology”, summarizes Sami Aoun.

In this case, what politicians are doing, he continues, is to draw inspiration from the tribal and clan traditions that have allowed marriage at puberty for centuries, in remote places in Iraq.

The government wants to extend this possibility to all Iraqis.

Mr. Aoun notes that this Iraqi desire to accept marriages of children aged 9 years comes while the women’s rights movement is also fighting in other Muslim countries against the marriage of minors.

According to the United Nations, at least 12 million girls around the world are married before the age of 18. This is even the case in countries where the practice is formally prohibited and decried, such as in Morocco, where the authorities note that the practice nevertheless persists.

Hope somewhere? Yes. In Colombia, which has just passed a law banning child marriage.