The 8th of March marks International Women’s Day. Today and every day we honour and recognise women’s rights as human rights, their struggles for equality and equity and also their resilience to all the challenges they have faced. Women have achieved a lot towards gender equality. However, there is still much way to go.
Recently, in August 2024, the Iraqi Parliament proposed Amendments to the 1959 Iraqi Personal Status Law, a law that governs family and inheritance issues. The proposed amendments undermined women’s and young girls rights allowing- among others- marriages from as young as nine years old. The proposal faced strong opposition by human rights organisations, activists and the international community
On the 21st of January 2025, The Iraqi Parliament voted for the amendments on the existing law. Until now, the legal age of marriage was 18 years old and on some occasions 15 years after judicial consent. Following the amendment, the traditional Islamic jurisprudence is suggesting the puberty of a girl as indicative of her capacity to get married, lowering in any case the legal age of marriage at 15. However, the hard truth is that under the amended law, the Islamic courts have now increased authority over family issues. So, in reality lots of marriages also happen under this age remaining unregistered to state courts. This legalises child marriages and consequently physical and sexual abuse as well as a tremendous impact on their mental well-being with women and girls be severely affected.
The Amendments of the 1959 Personal Status Law are a major step back, as the same law used to be recognised as one of the most forward thinking family laws across the Middle East. It now diminishes basic rights of women and young girls, it significantly expands the authority of clerics over family law matters including divorce and inheritance issues. The legislation promotes severe violations of fundamental human rights such as right to equality and non-discrimination, right to property and inheritance as well as the right to marriage and family life.
As an Iraqi citizen, activist and woman, I would like to raise this issue today, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, and to become the voice of those who are not able to raise it, until they are. The latest legislative developments have provoked a regional but also an international outrage with women’s and human organisations as well as activists all over the world to demand the withdrawal of this law, as it violates international human rights conventions that Iraq is party of.
08-03-2025
