Unregistered marriages are already a loophole enabling child marriage in Iraq, where child marriage rates have been rising over the last 20 years, a March 2024 report by Human Rights Watch found.

The potential consequences of child marriage were laid bare in a 2016 report by the United Nations Population Fund on the effects of child marriage in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, which ...

IRBIL, Iraq — Shaimaa Saadoun is haunted by her memory of being forced into an abusive marriage to a 39-year-old man just after she turned 13. Her impoverished family near the southern Iraqi ...

Iraq’s parliament passed three divisive laws Tuesday, including amendments to the country’s personal status law that opponents say would in effect legalize child marriage.

Over the last 20 years, child marriage rates have steadily been increasing in Iraq. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 28 percent of girls in Iraq are married before age 18 .

Protesters in Baghdad's Tahrir Square demonstrating against a proposed law that critics said would legalize child marriage in Iraq on August 8, 2024.

Iraq’s parliament has approved new legislation that would lower the minimum age of marriage below 18, a shift rights groups say will legalize “child rape” in Iraq.

Although marriage under the age of 18 has been a national law since the 1950s, a survey by Unicef found that 28% of girls in Iraq got married before they turned 18.

But as the country plunged into the darkest days of the Iraq War, traditions emerged anew — including child marriage. In 2007, Al-Monitor says, 21 percent of young Iraqi women reported they were ...

She warned the proposals “would eliminate the current legal marriage age of 18 for both girls and boys, paving the way for child marriages, as well as stripping women and girls of protections ...

The potential consequences of child marriage were laid bare in a separate 2016 report by the United Nations Population Fund on the effects of child marriage in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region ...