An Iraqi parliamentary committee has been reported to have halted a vote on a bill, allowing girls as young as nine years to marry, instead revising the law after an outcry from women rights groups’.
SNG website quoted Lama al-Halfi, chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s women affairs committee, saying in a press statement on Wednesday, that the “personal status” law had been withdrawn from voting on and returned to the committee for further deliberation with the endowments committee.
“This (draft) law permits girls between eight and nine to get married, while the Iraqi law set in 1959 sets a girl’s maturity age between 15 and 16,” Halfi said, asking to adopt that age range in the new amendments.
The Iraqi parliament had given an initial approval early this month of the draft amendments to the marriage age.
Womens rights groups had staged demonstrations against the law earlier this week, calling it a setback on women rights’.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq had also asked for wider consultations over the bill.
“Women and girls in Iraq have suffered violations of their basic human rights and violence in armed conflict, in particular under the terrorist group Daesh. They aspire that the realization of their rights should be prioritized with a view to achieving equality with men,” the mission said.
The legal marriage age in Iraq is 18, but the existing personal status law gives judges the power to sanction marriage for girls as young as 15 in “urgent” cases.
by Mohamed Mostafa
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