Iraq has reportedly passed a bill which included amendments that technically legalize child marriage, according to those who opposed it.
Islamic courts will now have more authority over family matters including marriage, divorce and inheritance because of the amendments, which critics have said undermine Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law, AP reports. The bill will allow the courts to rule over cases according to their interpretation of Islamic law.
While the current minimum age of marriage in Iraq is 18, the new bill suggests that clerics could decide to allow child marriages in certain cases. In the Jaafari school of Islamic law, which is followed by many Shiite religious authorities in Iraq, children as young as 9 are encouraged to be married off.
Those in favor of the change, namely Shiite lawmakers, defend the amendments “as a means to align the law with Islamic principles and reduce Western influence on Iraqi culture,” per AP. The session during which the bill was passed ended in “chaos,” with lawmakers against the bill accusing the proponents of it of violating voting procedures.
“Half of the lawmakers present in the session did not vote, which broke the legal quorum,” a parliamentary official said on condition of anonymity, adding that some in attendance began climbing onto the podium.
“Regarding the civil status law, we are strongly supporting it and there were no issues with that,” said Raid al Maliki, an independent MP. “But it was combined with other laws to be voted on together…and this might lead to a legal appeal at the Federal Court.”
Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani expressed he was pleased with the outcome as “an important step in the process of enhancing justice and organizing the daily lives of citizens.”
Human rights activist Intisar al-Mayali said passage of the civil status law amendments “will leave disastrous effects on the rights of women and girls, through the marriage of girls at an early age, which violates their right to life as children, and will disrupt the protection mechanisms for divorce, custody and inheritance for women.”
This Story originally came from humanevents.com