Child marriage: Premarital testing of two 7-year-old children in Kazerun
In recent days, a picture of the premarital tests of two 7-year-old children in Kazerun city, Fars province, has been published, indicating the recurrence of child marriage in Iran. However, after the publication of the aforementioned image, the Kazerun Justice Public Relations Office claimed in a statement that the families of these children had taken an initial test in accordance with their customs so that there would be no problems with possible marriages of children of legal age in the future. In June of this year, the President of Iran, following a request from the Minister of Sports and Youth to amend the age criteria for granting a 100 million marriage loan, stating that loans should not be granted to people under the age of 18, ordered an investigation and amendment to the law. This order has not only not been implemented so far, but next year, applicants for boys under the age of 25 and girls under the age of 23 will receive the maximum loan amount. This will likely lead to an increase in child marriages.
According to HRANA news agency, citing Rokna, in recent days, a picture of premarital tests of two 7-year-old children has been published in the city of Kazerun in Fars Province.
Following this incident, the Kazerun Justice Department's public relations department issued a statement claiming that the families of these children, in accordance with their customs, had taken an initial test so that there would be no problems in the future with possible marriages of children of legal age.
In June of this year, the President of Iran ordered an investigation and amendment to the law, following a request from the Minister of Sports and Youth to amend the age criteria for granting marriage loans, which stated that loans should not be granted to people under 18 and over 40.
But recently, Ali Babaei Karnami, spokesman for the Islamic Consultative Assembly Commission, said : According to the resolution of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran is obliged to pay seventy million tomans to each couple in 1400 with a ten-year repayment period, and in order to support young marriages and reduce the age of marriage, it was decided that girls under 23 and boys under 25 would be given a marriage loan of 100 million tomans. This will likely lead to an increase in child marriage.
Child marriage has been on the rise in Iran in recent years, and child rights activists say the phenomenon will have a negative impact on the health of Iranian families in the future.
The high rate of child marriage before reaching intellectual and mental maturity indicates the extent of this phenomenon in Iran. The age of marriage in Iran is determined based on “sexual maturity,” while experts say that sexual maturity is only part of the dimensions of full human maturity. Growth, awareness, education, and freedom of choice are the most basic and humane conditions for forming a family.
The physical and psychological harms caused by child marriage cause irreparable damage to the lives of girls, especially pregnancies under the age of 18, maternal mortality, depression, and sometimes suicide attempts, in addition to harms such as divorce, failure to attend school, and the persistence of the cycle of cultural and economic poverty.
According to published statistics, over 95,000 divorces involving women under the age of 19 were recorded between 2011 and 2015, with approximately 5,760 of these divorces related to marriages in which the couple was under the age of 15.
Source: HRANA
