The Iraqi parliament is advancing a highly controversial amendment to the Personal Status Law that could legalize child marriage and erode women’s rights, drawing widespread condemnation from human rights organizations and activists.

The proposed amendment, which had its first reading on August 4, 2023, is expected to undergo two more readings and a debate before a final vote. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has voiced strong opposition, warning that the amendment could severely undermine the rights of women and girls in Iraq.

The amendment would allow religious authorities to govern marriage and inheritance matters, potentially at the expense of the fundamental rights enshrined in Iraq’s constitution and international law. If passed, the legislation could permit girls as young as nine years old to marry, a significant rollback of protections that have been hard-won over the years.

"The Iraqi parliament’s passage of this bill would be a devastating step backward for Iraqi women and girls and the rights they have fought hard to enshrine in law," said Sarah Sanbar, an Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Formally legalizing child marriage would rob countless girls of their futures and well-being. Girls belong in school and on the playground, not in a wedding dress."

Under the proposed amendment, couples would be able to choose whether their marriage contract is governed by the existing Personal Status Law or by specific Islamic schools of jurisprudence. This could lead to different legal regimes for different sects, further entrenching sectarianism in Iraq’s legal system and undermining equality under the law.

Currently, the Personal Status Law sets the legal marriage age at 18, or 15 with judicial approval based on the child’s "maturity and physical capacity." However, the Jaafari school of law, followed by many Shia Muslims in Iraq, allows girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 to marry.

In addition to legalizing child marriage, the amendment would legitimize unregistered marriages conducted by religious leaders, which are currently illegal under Iraqi law. HRW reports that these unregistered marriages have already enabled child marriage in Iraq, where the practice has been on the rise over the past two decades. A March 2024 HRW report found that 28 percent of girls in Iraq are married before the age of 18, with 22 percent of unregistered marriages involving girls under 14.

The amendment would also weaken protections for women in divorce proceedings. Under current law, if a husband requests a divorce, the wife has the right to remain in the marital home for three years at the husband’s expense, receive two years of spousal maintenance, and claim the current value of her dowry. The proposed changes could allow religious law to take precedence, potentially stripping women of these protections.

Women’s inheritance rights are also at risk. While current law already provides daughters with a smaller share of inheritance compared to sons, the amendment could reduce this further under certain religious laws. In some cases, if a family has no son, agricultural land could revert to the state rather than being inherited by daughters.

The amendment would also grant significant power to religious authorities, who would be responsible for developing a "code of Sharia rulings on personal status matters" to be submitted to the parliament. This code would not be subject to parliamentary review or public scrutiny, effectively removing democratic oversight.

The proposed amendment has sparked protests from Iraqi rights groups and activists, along with opposition from more than 15 women parliament members from various political parties. Similar attempts to amend the Personal Status Law in 2014 and 2017 were ultimately unsuccessful.

Human rights organizations have emphasized that the amendment would violate several international treaties to which Iraq is a party, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These treaties obligate Iraq to protect the rights of women and children, including prohibiting child marriage and ensuring that decisions about children in divorce cases are made in their best interests.

"Iraqi parliamentarians should reject efforts to strip women and girls of their legal protections and refuse to undo decades of hard-won rights," Sanbar urged. "Failure to do so means current and future generations of Iraqi women will remain strangled by an oppressive patriarchal legal system."

As the amendment progresses through the legislative process, human rights organizations and activists are calling on the Iraqi parliament to uphold the rights of women and girls and reject this regressive change to the law.