Women and children’s rights campaigners in Iraq have pushed back at proposals that could enshrine sectarianism in family relationships, hand more power in family matters to clerics and open the door for child marriage to be legalized as young as nine years old.
The amendments to Law No. 188, the Personal Status Law of 1959 have been heavily promoted by the Coordination Framework, a coalition of conservative Shia Islamist parties that form the largest bloc in parliament.
The first reading took place on Sunday, following a failed attempt on July 24 that was shelved after some parties objected. It is only the latest attempt to bring forward amendments to the law, with previous ones being shelved after political outcry.
According to the draft bill, when concluding a marriage contract, a Muslim couple are required to choose either the Sunni or Shia sect. They can then choose that sect to represent them in “all matters of personal status” rather than the civil judiciary.
“When a dispute occurs between the spouses regarding the doctrine according to whose provisions the marriage contract was concluded, the contract is deemed to have been concluded in accordance with the husband’s doctrine unless evidence exists to the contrary,” reads the draft, which was circulated by a number of Iraqi politicians on social media.
It would also allow figures from “the offices of the Shiite and Sunni endowments” to finalize marriages rather than the courts. The draft requires Shia and Sunni endowments to submit a “code of legal rulings” to the parliament six months after ratifying the amendments, stipulating the Shia code would be based on “Jaafari jurisprudence”.
Although the question of child marriage is not directly addressed in the amendments, previous versions of the bill have been more explicit and legal experts have warned that it could be allowed based on Jaafari jurisprudence. Many Iraqi marriages are unregistered and conducted by religious figures, making them illegal under the current Iraqi Personal Status Law.
The proposed amendments could see those marriages – 22 percent of which, according to the UN, involve girls under 14 – legitimized by the state.
However, last week the Coordination Framework insisted the amendments would come before the parliament, saying they were constitutional and did “not contradict the constants of Sharia and the foundations of democracy”.
Ra’ad al-Maliki, the MP who proposed the bill, has also hit back at claims the bill would lower the age minimum for marriage, calling them “lies fabricated by some out of hatred for applying the provisions of God’s law to those who want them”.
‘No to the marriage of minors’
Women’s rights organizations have publicly demonstrated against the bill. On July 28, a group of activists – including campaigners from the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) – gathered in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square in opposition to the bill.
