Iraq’s personal status law goes back to 1959. It was approved in the wake of the overthrow of the British backed Iraqi monarchy in a military coup led by Gen. Abdul Karim Qasim in 1958.
It established the minimum age for marriage at 18. It restricted polygamy and banned forced marriages. It has remained in effect for the past 58 years. Do you want to know more?
In 2003, just a few months after Saddam Hussain was toppled by the US and UK in 'Operation Iraqi Freedom', religious parties tried to revise the Personal Status Law. They also tried in 2014 and are now trying again!
If successful, this would lower the age of marriage from the current legal age of eighteen, bringing it right down to as young as nine-years. Amendment's would also restore the authority of religious courts.
As Human Rights Watch have reported, the pushback against the amendment has not come from abroad but has been spearheaded by Iraqi women and men themselves.
It was also Iraqi women who successfully advocated for passage of the Personal Status Law back in 1959, which was led by the Iraqi Women's League.
In 1959, Naziha Dulaimi of the IWL became the first female minister in modern Iraqi history, and the first woman cabinet minister in the Arab world. Dulaimi died in 2007.
