Parvaneh Salahshouri, head of the women’s faction in the regime’s parliament, spoke about child marriages in Iran stating Six per cent of Iranian girls get married between 10 and 14.
In a meeting in Tehran on child marriages, according to the state-run ILNA news agency report on January 6, 2019.
She said, “We continue to see girls get married between 9 and 14 years of age… Some% of those who get married are girls between 10 and 14.”
“Do we want to realize population growth by marriages of girls under 13?… There are one million young men and women who do not have the wherewithal to get married. Instead of opposition to the bill on child marriages and focusing on the marriage of 40,000 kids, it might be better to provide these youths the resources they need,” she added.
“How could a 10-year-old be deprived of the right to vote but be able to get married while she is not prepared at all to tend to the needs of her husband and is not in any way prepared to be married and bear a child? Given their health and healthy pregnancy, many of these women suffer from cancer after they reach 30.” Salahshouri continued.
The special assistant to citizens’ rights in the presidential directorate on women and family affairs, Shahnaz Sajjadi, also addressed the same meeting.
Describing early marriage as “one of the tragedies of our times,” Sajjadi said, “Child marriage violates children’s rights and we are not entitled to obliterate the childhood of any human being. Under our law, a minor (under 18 years of age) is not entitled to own a property, have a driver’s license or vote because he/she is considered immature. How do we expect such a person to be able to get married? This is while the Convention on the Rights of the Child reiterates that a child becomes mature at the age of 18.”
The Iranian regime, member of UN Women board, has just rejected a parliamentary motion to ban child marriage for under 13-yr-old girls.
The spokesperson for the parliament’s Legal Commission recently attempted to justify the rejection of a bill to raise the legal age of marriage for children in Iran’s parliament.
“For a girl who is alone and has no one, marriage is definitely a game changer,” Hassan Nourozi said in comments carried by state-run media.
“In our opinion, there are some problems in the proposed bill because many of the criteria are not acceptable. According to the representatives in the Legal Commission, a 15-year-old girl is not considered a child … and is fit to marry,” the cleric said.
Nourozi said that according to the sharia laws, Qom jurisprudence and Iranian and Lebanese experts, a girl goes into puberty at 9 years of age.
He also compared Iranian girls living in the 21st century with his grandmother.
“My own grandmother was married at 9 years of age and did not have any problems,” he said.
“Our point is that if a girl who does not have a father and has problems can marry a 17-year-old young (man), and there is no problem with that,” he added defending the rejection of the child marriage bill.
child spouse bill
The so-called “child spouse” bill, introduced into parliament in 2016, proposes an absolute ban on the marriage of girls under age 13 and an absolute ban for the marriage of boys under 16.
For the marriage of girls between the ages of 13-16 and for boys between the ages 16-18, the bill would require parental consent and court permission. Marriage for girls over 16 and for boys over 18 would require no court permission.
According to statistics from official sources, the marriages of at least 37,000 girls between the ages of 10 to 14 were registered in Iran in 2017. This does not include marriages that were not legally registered.
Reports also indicate that there are 24,000 divorcees under 18 in Iran, of which 15,000 are under the age of 15.
Another report published in Iranian media in 2017 said that 17% of girls in Iran married under the age of 18. The number did not include “temporary marriages”, which are on the rise in Iran.
