Vice Chair of Parliamentary Commission: 13-Year-Old Girl is Not a Child Bride
The vice chair of Iran’s parliamentary legal and judicial commission says that child marriage should only apply to cases of marriage for 9 or 10-year-old children, and a 13-year-old girl is “no longer a child bride.”
Hassan Norouzi has rejected the designation of child marriage for girls aged 13 and 14, stating: “The correct law for marriage is Islamic law, and the marriageable age for girls was considered to mean the age of puberty, which is generally 13 or 14 years old, and whether a girl can move her life forward also depends on the permission of her guardian.”
According to Islamic law, the age of puberty for girls is 9 years old and for boys is 15 years old, but Iranian government officials typically approve marriages for girls over 13 years old.
According to an announcement by Iran’s Statistical Center, the statistics for marriages of girls aged 10 to 14 in the year 1399 increased by 10.5 percent compared to the previous year, and approximately 5 percent of all registered marriages in 1399 involved children under 15 years old.
These estimates only cover marriages registered with the country’s Civil Registry Organization, and it appears that the actual figures are higher.
In recent years, attempts have been made to reform laws related to child marriage, including a bill presented to parliament that set “the minimum marriageable age for girls at 16 years old and for boys at 18 years old,” but the bill was rejected due to opposition from some Shiite religious authorities.
In 2018, a bill prohibiting marriage with children was also rejected in the parliamentary legal commission. Hassan Norouzi was one of the opponents of this bill at that time, deeming the increase in minimum marriageable age contrary to Islamic law and incorrect, claiming that girls who marry at young ages “get divorced less and have healthier births.”
According to official statistics from Iran’s Civil Registry Organization, in the first six months of the current year, 791 children were born to mothers aged 10 to 14, and during the same period, 36,562 children were born to mothers aged 15 to 19.
Source: Radio Farda
