(ANALYSIS) In early August, thousands of women and women’s rights campaigners took to the streets across Iraq to protest proposed legal changes that effectively would legalize child marriage.

The proposed change is to allow citizens to choose between religious authorities or civil judiciary to decide on family matters. The change would allow for the application of the provisions of Islamic Shiite or Sunni sects, and thereafter the Shariah jurisprudence would apply to the relevant individuals in all personal status matters. The legal change passed its first out of three parliamentary readings required.

As explained by Javaid Rehman, professor of law at Brunel University London, “The application of Sharia jurisprudence would have significantly negative consequences for women and girls in personal status matters; this would not only legitimize child marriages but also have a discriminatory impact on them in matters relating to inheritance, divorce and child custody.

Within traditional Islamic jurisprudence, it is the puberty of a girl that determines her capacity to be married (and not any formal age).” Furthermore, as Javaid added, the bill would have retrospective application, meaning that individuals could decide (subsequent to the bill becoming law) to retrospectively rely upon the Shariah jurisprudence in matters related to all personal status.

Iraq already has a problem with child marriages. As it currently stands, the Personal Status Act (No. 188 of 1959) sets up the minimum age for marriage at 18 years for women and men, with a legal exception allowing for the marriage of girls at the age of 15 years. According to a survey by the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, 28% of girls in Iraq had married before they reached the age of 18. This is a very high number considering that the law allows for the marriage of girls from 15 years of age only in exceptional circumstances — 28% (or more than 1 in 4 girls) does not seem an exception. Child marriage is also not one issue only — it affects the whole life of these girls.

As reported by UNICEF, “Child marriage robs girls of their childhood and threatens their well-being. Girls who marry before 18 are more likely to experience domestic violence and less likely to remain in school. They have worse economic and health outcomes than their unmarried peers, which are eventually passed down to their own children, straining a country’s capacity to provide quality health and education services. Child brides often become pregnant during adolescence, when the risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth increases. The practice can also isolate girls from family and friends, taking a heavy toll on their mental health.”

This is also why women and campaigners took to the streets across Iraq. The proposal to change the law to enable child marriage is even more controversial as Iraq has been marking the 10th anniversary of the Daesh’s attack on Sinjar and atrocities against the Yazidis and other religious minorities in the country, atrocities which meet the legal definition of genocide. The Daesh atrocities included mass killings, abductions, 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 abductors and every man they were subsequently sold or gifted to, and abused every single day. Over 2,600 Yazidi women and children are still missing to this day, and if alive, they continue to live through the hell of enslavement.

The proposed legal change is clearly in violation of international law standards and Iraq’s international law obligations.

Iraq is a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In accordance with the joint general recommendation by CEDAW and CRC, child marriages are forced marriages and therefore unlawful in international law.

At the time of accession to CEDAW, Iraq made several reservations that ultimately undermined the treaty and its effectiveness. As its reservation, Iraq indicated that “approval of and accession to this Convention shall not mean that the Republic of Iraq is bound by the provisions of article 2, paragraphs (f) and (g), nor of article 16 of the Convention. The reservation to this last-mentioned article shall be without prejudice to the provisions of the Islamic Shariah according women’s rights equivalent to the rights of their spouses so as to ensure a just balance between them.” Article 2 of CEDAW states that “States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women and, to this end, undertake: (f) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women (g) To repeal all national penal provisions which constitute discrimination 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 in particular shall ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women. … 2. The betrothal and the marriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to make the registration of marriages in an official registry compulsory.”

In 2019, during the 7th periodic review of Iraq, 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 continued to affect women and girls across the country. These findings included the persistence of harmful practices that discriminate against women including child marriage, temporary marriage (mut’ah marriage, in which marriage is terminated after a specified period), forced marriage, female genital mutilation and crimes committed in the name of “honor.”

Back in 2019, the CEDAW Committee called upon Iraq to adopt a comprehensive strategy to eliminate discriminatory stereotypes and all harmful practices, such as child marriage, among others. The 2024 proposed change to the law does the opposite. The CEDAW Committee called upon Iraq to repeal the discriminatory legal exceptions to the minimum age of marriage for girls contained in the Personal Status Act. It further recommended that legal exceptions to the minimum age of marriage should be granted only in exceptional cases and authorized by a competent court, for girls and boys of at least 16 years of age and upon their expressed consent. Again, the 2024 proposed change to the law does the opposite.

Whether emboldened by the Taliban’s abuse of women’s rights in Afghanistan or the suppression of women’s rights in Iran, in both cases with impunity, Iraq needs to make a decision as to where it stands on human rights and especially women’s rights.

If Iraq wants to ensure the implementation of its promises to women after the horrific atrocities perpetrated by Daesh since 2014, it must ensure stronger protections of women’s rights, not weaker.

This piece was republished from Forbes with permission.

Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab is a human rights advocate, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. She’s authored the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East” and more than 30 UN reports. She works on the topic of genocide and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities around the world. She is on X @EwelinaUO.