Masoumeh Ebtekar: Age gap in some child marriages reaches 50 years
Marriage week in Iran is being held with promotional and encouragement programs while one out of every two marriages ends in emotional divorce, and the status of the child marriage bill remains unclear. In many cities, marriage of girls aged 10 to 14 is common.
The Ministry of Sports and Youth has named August 3rd as “National Marriage Day” and is holding ceremonies throughout different provinces during one week to promote and encourage young people to start families. The state media’s “Display Network” is airing films with marriage themes for a week. The Communications Minister announced that couples who marry during this week will receive one year of free internet. In many cities, officials have stated that no divorces will be registered during marriage week.
Festivals and promotional-encouragement programs this week are being held while the law prohibiting marriage of girls under 13 remains unresolved, and “child marriage” has not been excluded from the promotion campaigns.
Masoumeh Ebtekar, Rouhani’s deputy for women and family affairs, told Iran newspaper in an interview: “Child marriage occurs more in border and rural areas. Recently we see that prosecutors from the judiciary are also getting involved and preventing such unconventional marriages. In some cases the age gap reaches up to 50 years, and in some cases men marry girls under 13 years old.”
In the summer of 2018, the Parliamentary Research Center, citing civil registration statistics, reported that most underage girls have married men who were at least 10 years older than them. The report acknowledged that in 2016, three girls aged 10-14 married men aged 70, and there were 138 marriages with age gaps of 25 to 29 years.
Marriage of older men with young girls is considered child abuse, but child marriage has not yet been criminalized in Iran’s laws.
Ebtekar says marriage is not slavery and passing the bill can regulate the marriage issue: “Based on statistics from the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, divorce occurs at different ages, but among those who married under 13, this rate has been much higher than other ages.”
In a bill brought to parliament by child rights activists and the women representatives faction, the marriage age for boys is set at 18 and for girls at 16. This bill became stuck in the judicial commission, whose ten members are all men.
Until 2000, the age of puberty for girls was 9 years, and in the sixth parliament this limit was raised to 13. Currently, according to Article 1041 of the Civil Code, marriage of a girl under 13 is possible with the permission of the father and consideration of interests.
Marriage week in Iran is being held while the director general of Hamadan’s civil registration says 2 percent of births in this province are from mothers under 15 years old. Divorce, mortality from pregnancy, sexual dissatisfaction, domestic violence, and inability to manage life are listed as harms of child marriage.
According to the civil registration organization’s statistics, Razavi Khorasan, East Azerbaijan, Khuzestan, Zanjan, and North Khorasan are at the top of provinces where children aged 10-14 marry.
Source: DW
