Married at nine: the law that adds to child bride agony
A million girls are forcibly wed each month before their 18th birthday. Now Iraq is worsening the pain.
I will never forget the butterfly dress. A frothy white wedding gown embroidered with a train of colourful butterflies, made by women in a secret workshop in Taliban-controlled Kabul. Initially I was struck by its beauty. On closer inspection, however, the mannequin seemed rather short and, as the butterflies fluttered down the dress, they faded to white.
“It represents a child bride, and the fading colours are her fading dreams,” its designer, the women’s activist Laila Haidari, explained. She lifted the skirt to reveal a petticoat hemmed with coloured pencils. “That’s what a girl of nine or 12 should be doing,” she said. “Drawing pictures, not getting married and having babies.” For her it was personal – her family married her off to a mullah at 12 and she was a mother of three by 18.
I thought about that dress last week following the news that conservative politicians in Iraq are trying to lower the legal marriage age to nine. The justice ministry introduced a bill to parliament that passed its first reading last Sunday. The bill amends the law to allow people to choose between the religious authorities or the civil judiciary for decisions on family affairs. If passed, it would allow girls to wed at nine and boys at 15. The move prompted protests in Baghdad and other cities as well as international outrage on social media. Women’s rights activists said it would legalise child rape.
“This is a catastrophe for women,” said Raya Faiq, the co-ordinator of a coalition of groups opposing the law change. A bloc of 25 female Iraqi MPs is trying to stop the draft law being put to a second vote, but face strong opposition. Supporters of the bill argue it aims to align with Islamic law and protect young girls from “immoral relationships”.
It’s not the first time Iraqi lawmakers have tried this – previous attempts were blocked. But the country’s political system is dominated by conservative Shia Muslim parties who form the largest coalition in parliament and have been pushing to erode women’s and LGBT rights. In April they made same-sex relationships punishable with up to 15 years’ imprisonment. Initially they were trying to impose the death penalty. The law also criminalised transgender people and what it called “intentional practice of effeminacy”.
In the past year in Iraq three female social media influencers have been mysteriously shot dead, most recently Ghufran Sawadi, 30, who posted videos of herself dancing to pop music. I was in Iraq last month and the young women I spoke to were worried. It was jarring to go through a checkpoint outside Mosul and see it decorated with Iranian flags and photos of the recently assassinated commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. It was manned by Iranian-backed Hashed al-Shaabi militia – yes, this is what the 2003 war to overthrow Saddam Hussein has resulted in.
It would be easy to cast the new bill as yet another attempt to push back women’s rights. But it’s not so straightforward. The minimum age for marriage in Iraq has been 18 since 1959, but, over the past 20 years, rates of child marriage have been increasing. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 28 per cent of women in Iraq are married by 18.
Because these marriages, authorised by religious leaders, have no legal force, the girls – and their children – are denied all sorts of other rights. Hospitals in Iraq refuse to admit women for childbirth without proof of marriage. Women without a civil marriage contract have no claims on inheritance or maintenance and cannot apply for divorce.
Girls of nine belong in a playground not in a wedding dress. Study after study tell us girls who marry early are more likely to suffer sexual and physical violence, death in childbirth and mental health problems, and are less likely to complete secondary education, leading to reduced opportunities for employment and financial independence.
Yet every day, girls around the world are forced to leave their families, marry against their will, endure sexual and physical abuse, and bear children while still children themselves. Every year, at least 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18, according to UNICEF. We are living in a time of much conflict which uproots and wrecks families, frequently leaving girls unprotected. Often child marriage is for economic reasons – one less mouth to feed.
One of the saddest stories I covered in recent years was a girl called Fatima, eight years old in a tattered emerald dress, being sold to a much older man in Kabul. Her extended family of 30 were living on eight pieces of bread a day. “I am having to choose between selling my daughters or all starving,” her father said.
I looked into Fatima’s limpid eyes and asked what she thought. “I would like to go to school,” she said.
The US State Department describes child marriage as a human rights abuse and pledges to outlaw the practice internationally by 2030. Numbers have gone down, says the organisation Girls not Brides, largely because of a campaign in India, but too slowly. At current rates, it estimates it would take 300 years to eliminate child marriage.
Yet here’s a thing. Did you know that 37 American states allow child marriage? Minors can marry, with parental consent, before they can vote, drink or buy lottery tickets in the majority of the country. The minimum legal marriage age in England and Wales was raised from 16 to 18 only last year. In some areas forced marriages continue, only underground.
Sixteen is of course a lot different from nine but in my view still too young. The saddest part of my job as a war correspondent, and as a mother, is seeing children not allowed to be children. In Gaza, a friend sends me “before and after” photographs of his six-year-old daughter Razan, in pink dress and tiara clutching her white cat and living among ruins. They have been forced to move 15 times by Israeli bombardment. In Tel Aviv a three-year-old boy asks every day for his parents, who never came home from the Nova music festival – his mother killed and his father among the hostages taken by Hamas. Last month in Ukraine I was at a camp for children who had been abducted by Russians. “They have the eyes of an adult,” the camp director said.
In a time of division surely one thing we can agree on is that children must be protected, whether from bombs or predators.
Before I left Laila Haidari and her butterfly dress, the designer pointed out a final detail. The bride was holding a puppet bride with its mouth sewn up. By forcing a child into marriage, she said, “You’re taking away her doll and giving her a monster.”
