This spring, about ten thousand girls aged 10 to 14 were married in Iran.
According to a report by the Statistical Center of Iran, 9,753 girls aged 10 to 14 were married in Iran during this spring.
ISNA news agency, in publishing this news, wrote that this statistic is “the highest seasonal figure of marriages for girls aged 10 to 14” over the past two years. Another part of the report states that during this spring, “45,522 girls aged 15 to 19” also got married.
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 generally agree with the marriage of girls over the age of 13.
In recent years, the number of child marriages in Iran has increased. According to the Statistical Center of Iran, the number of marriages of girls aged 10 to 14 increased by 10.5 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year, and about five percent of all registered marriages in 2019 were marriages of children under 15.
On the other hand, according to a report by the Civil Registration Organization, in the first six months of this year, 791 children were born to mothers aged 10 to 14.
These estimates only relate to marriages registered with the country's Civil Registration Organization, and it seems that the actual number is higher.
Previously, Mahmoud Abbasi, Iran's Deputy Minister of Justice for Human Rights, referred to "Iran's being questioned in international forums regarding child marriage," and said that the actual rate of early marriages in Iran is much higher than official statistics.
He also mentioned cases of marriages under the age of ten, saying that a 9-year-old girl got married, had three children within three years, and then divorced.
In recent years, there have been efforts to reform laws related to child marriage, including a bill presented in parliament that would have set the "minimum age of marriage for girls at 16 years of age in the Islamic calendar and for boys at 18 years of age in the Islamic calendar," but due to opposition from some Shiite religious authorities, this bill was rejected.
In 2018, the bill banning child marriage was rejected by the Judicial Committee of the Islamic Consultative Assembly.
In a report to the UN Human Rights Council on March 29, Javed Rehman, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, referred to the prevalence of child marriage in Iran and called for "urgent reforms" regarding the Islamic Republic's treatment of women and girls, but this request has not been heeded by Iranian government officials.
Source: Radio Farda
