[ad_1]
BEIRUT Iraq Parliament is moving forward Amendment Iraq’s Personal Status Law will allow Iraq’s religious authorities, rather than state law, to regulate marriage and inheritance matters at the expense of fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The Iraqi parliament completed its first reading of the bill on August 4, 2023, and will conduct two readings and debate the bill before deciding whether to vote it into law.
If adopted, the amendment would have a disastrous impact on the rights of women and girls guaranteed under international law, as it would allow girls to marry as young as 9, undermine the principle of equality under Iraqi law, and remove women’s protections with regard to divorce and inheritance. Child marriage puts girls at greater risk of sexual and physical violence, adverse physical and mental health consequences, and deprives them of education and employment opportunities.
“The passage of this bill by the Iraqi parliament will be a devastating setback for Iraqi women and girls and the rights they have fought so hard for under the law,” he said. Sarah SambalIraq researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Formally legalizing child marriage will deprive countless girls of their future and happiness. Girls belong in school and on playgrounds, not in wedding dresses.”
Human Rights Watch said the draft amendment does not seek to reverse Iraq’s severe and growing problem of child marriage but rather to legalize it.
Iraq Human rights groups and activists have Taking to the streets Protesting the amendment, a group of more than 15 female members of parliament People from different parties united to oppose the passage of the law. 2014 and again 2017all failed.
According to the draft amendments, couples entering into a marriage contract can choose to apply the provisions of the Personal Status Law or the provisions of a specific school of Islamic law. If the couple are from different sects, the sect of the husband’s sect will apply.
Such an arrangement would in effect create separate legal systems that would grant different rights to different religious sects. This would further entrench sectarianism in Iraq and undermine the right to equality under the law that article 14 of the Constitution provides to all Iraqis. constitution and International Human Rights Law.
For example, the Jafari School of Law, which is followed by many Shia Muslims in Iraq, allow Girls are allowed to marry as young as 9 and boys as young as 15. The Personal Status Law sets the legal age for marriage at 18, or 15 with a judge’s permission and based on the child’s “maturity and physical capabilities,” in violation of international legal standards and best practices.
The draft amendments would also certify unregistered marriages, which are those performed by religious leaders but not registered with the personal status courts, and Illegal The amendments would also remove criminal penalties for men who enter into such marriages under the current Personal Status Law and allow religious leaders, rather than the courts, to finalize marriages.
Unregistered marriages have become a loophole for child marriages in Iraq, where the rate has been increasing over the past 20 years. Report Human Rights Watch found that 28% of girls in Iraq Marry before 18. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, twenty two% of unregistered marriages involved girls under the age of 14.
Unregistered marriages can also have a detrimental impact on women and girls’ ability to access government services, register the births of their children and assert their rights. Human Rights Watch saidWithout a civil marriage certificate, women and girls are unable to give birth in hospitals, which is itself an unfair barrier to health care, forcing them to give birth at home without access to emergency obstetric services. This increases the risk of medical complications, threatening the lives of mothers and babies. Children and young women are particularly vulnerable. Some Pregnancy complications.
The amendments will also remove and weaken protections for divorced women. Under the current personal status law, if the husband seeks a divorce, the wife is entitled to remain in the marital home for three years at the husband’s expense and receive two years of spousal support and the current value of her dowry. If the wife seeks a divorce, the judge can award her some benefits depending on the circumstances.
If religious law applies, women lose many of these protections. For example, according to the Jaafari school of law, if a woman divorce She has no right to a marriage home, maintenance or dowry, and the children, regardless of their age, can only continue to live with her for two years, provided she does not remarry.
Women also lose some inheritance rights. Even under current law, daughters inherit less of their parents’ wealth than sons. Some religious lawsdaughters inherited even less land, and if a family had no sons to inherit the farmland, the farmland would be returned to the state.
Finally, the amendment provides that the Shia Endowment Office Scholars Committee and the Sunni Endowment Office Fatwa Committee will prepare a “code of Islamic sharia rulings on personal status issues” and submit it to the House of Representatives within six months from the date the law comes into effect.
Human Rights Watch said this means lawmakers and the public will have no chance to review or vote on the code before it becomes law, eliminating democratic oversight and giving religious authorities disproportionate power to make laws.
The amendment was proposed by independent MP Raad al-Maliki, who also proposed amendments to Iraq’s anti-prostitution law. Criminalizing same-sex relationsgender-affirming medical interventions, and a bill to “promote homosexuality”, which was passed in April 2024. The law violates fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of association, privacy, equality, and non-discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Iraqis.
The proposed amendment would violate Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women Iraq ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1986, and the amendments deny women and girls gender-based rights. Convention on the Rights of the ChildThe convention, which Iraq ratified in 1994, legalizes child marriage, puts girls at risk of forced and early marriage, makes them vulnerable to sexual abuse and does not require decisions regarding children in divorce cases to be based on the best interests of the child.
The draft amendment appears to violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as it denies rights to certain persons based on their religion.
“Iraqi lawmakers should refuse to strip women and girls of their legal protections and roll back decades of hard-earned rights,” said Sambar. “Failure to do so will mean that current and future generations of Iraqi women will continue to be constrained by an oppressive, patriarchal legal system.”
[ad_2]
Source link
