In early August 2024, thousands of women and women’s rights activists took to the streets across Iraq to protest against proposed changes to the law that would effectively legalize child marriage. The proposed amendment is designed to allow citizens to choose between religious authorities or the civil courts to decide family matters. The amendment would allow the provisions of Islamic Shia or Sunni sects to be applied, and thereafter, Sharia law would apply to the individuals concerned in all personal status matters. The amendment was passed in the first of three required readings in parliament.

Professor Javaid Rehman, Professor of Law at Brunel University in London, explains: “The application of Sharia jurisprudence would have significant negative consequences for women and girls in personal status matters; not only would it legitimise child marriages, but it would also have discriminatory effects on them in inheritance, divorce and child custody matters. In traditional Islamic jurisprudence, a girl’s puberty determines her marriageability (rather than a formal age).” In addition, says Professor Javaid, the bill would have retrospective effect, meaning that individuals (after the bill comes into force) could decide to retrospectively invoke Sharia jurisprudence in all personal status matters.

Iraq already has a problem with child marriage. In its current form, the Personal Status Law (No. 188 of 1959) sets the minimum age of marriage for both men and women at 18, with a legal exception allowing girls to marry at age 15. According to a survey by the UN children’s fund UNICEF, 28% of girls in Iraq have married before the age of 18. This is a very high figure considering that the law only allows girls aged 15 and over to marry in exceptional circumstances. 28% (or more than one in four girls) does not seem to be an exception. Nor is child marriage just a problem – it affects these girls’ entire lives. As UNICEF reports: “Child marriage robs girls of their childhood and threatens their well-being. Girls who marry before the age of 18 are more likely to be victims of domestic violence and less likely to stay in school. They face poorer economic and health prospects than their unmarried peers, which ultimately passes on to their own children and overwhelms a country’s capacity to provide quality health and education services. Child brides often become pregnant during puberty, when the risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth increases. This practice can also isolate girls from family and friends, severely affecting their mental health.”

This is also why women and activists across Iraq took to the streets. The proposal to change the law to allow child marriages is all the more controversial as Iraq marks the 10th anniversary of Daesh’s attack on Sinjar and atrocities against the Yazidis and other religious minorities in the country, atrocities that meet the legal definition of genocide. Daesh’s atrocities included mass killings, kidnappings, forced marriages, rape and sexual violence, among others. Among the thousands of Yazidis abducted by Daesh were young girls who were forced to “marry” their captors and any man they were subsequently sold or given away to, and who were abused every day. Over 2,600 Yazidi women and children remain missing to this day, and if they are still alive, they continue to live through the hell of enslavement.

The proposed amendment to the law clearly violates the norms of international law and Iraq’s obligations under international law.

Iraq is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). However, upon its accession, Iraq made several reservations that ultimately undermined the treaty and its effectiveness. As a reservation, Iraq stated that “the approval of and accession to this Convention shall not imply that the Republic of Iraq is bound by the provisions of Article 2, paragraphs (f) and (g), or Article 16 of the Convention. The reservation to the latter article shall be without prejudice to the provisions of Islamic Sharia which grant women the same rights as their spouses in order to ensure a fair balance between them.” Article 2 of CEDAW states: “States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms and agree to pursue, by all appropriate means and without delay, a policy of eliminating discrimination against women. To this end, they undertake: (…) (f) to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to amend or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women; (g) to repeal all national penal provisions which discriminate against women.’

Article 16 of CEDAW states: “1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in all matters relating to marriage and family relations and shall ensure, in particular, on the basis of equality between men and women (…) 2. The engagement and marriage of a child shall have no legal effect. All necessary measures, including legislation, shall be taken to establish a minimum age for marriage and to make registration of marriages in an official register compulsory.”

In 2019, during Iraq’s 7th Periodic Review, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee), a body of independent experts that monitors the implementation of CEDAW, identified several harmful practices that continue to affect women and girls across the country. These findings include the persistence of harmful practices that discriminate against women, including child marriage, fixed-term marriages (mut’ah marriages, where the marriage is terminated after a certain period of time), forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and “honor” crimes.

Back in 2019, the CEDAW Committee called on Iraq to adopt a comprehensive strategy to eliminate discriminatory stereotypes and all harmful practices such as child marriage. The legislative amendment proposed for 2024 has the opposite effect. The CEDAW Committee called on Iraq to repeal the discriminatory legal exceptions to the minimum marriage age for girls in the Personal Status Law. It further recommended that legal exceptions to the minimum marriage age should only be granted in exceptional cases and with the approval of a competent court for girls and boys aged 16 and above and with their explicit consent. Here too, the legislative amendment proposed for 2024 has the opposite effect.

Whether emboldened by the Taliban’s disregard for women’s rights in Afghanistan or the repression of women’s rights in Iran – in both cases with impunity – Iraq must decide where it stands on human rights, and women’s rights in particular. If Iraq is to ensure the implementation of its promises to women after the horrific atrocities committed by Daesh since 2014, it must ensure stronger, not weaker, protection of women’s rights.