A proposed bill in Iraq’s parliament has sparked widespread outrage and concern, as it seeks to reduce the legal age of marriage for girls to just 9 years old. The controversial legislation, introduced by the Iraq Justice Ministry, aims to amend the country’s Personal Status Law, which currently sets the minimum age for marriage at 18.
The bill would allow citizens to choose between religious authorities or the civil judiciary to decide on family affairs. Critics fear this will lead to a slashing of rights in matters of inheritance, divorce, and child custody.
If passed, the bill would allow girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to wed, sparking fears of increased child marriage and exploitation. Critics argue that this regressive move would undermine decades of progress in promoting women’s rights and gender equality.
Human rights organizations, women’s groups, and civil society activists have vehemently opposed the bill, warning of serious consequences for young girls’ education, health, and well-being. They argue that child marriage leads to increased dropout rates, early pregnancies, and a heightened risk of domestic violence.
According to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, 28 percent of girls in Iraq are already married before the age of 18.
“Passing this law would show a country moving backward, not forwards,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Sarah Sanbar said.
What makes me think it is not both?
Well lets take a step back and look at how many pedophiles there are in the population. While we do not know the exact numbers the educated guesses, from rather too few studies that we have, range from 1% to 5%, most putting it at around 3%. I do not really believe that a tiny minority holds such powers as to influence politics or we would not have an AOC in the first place.
In order to understand why there are people advocating for low ages of marriage i would do take a look at our younger past and ask, why WAS the age for marriage low? And the answer, while not much more pleasent, is much simpler than: we somehow have pedohiles leading the world in the shadows. It is much easier to secure marriages that way, because guess what, children have not much say in their lives. So a powerful or rich person can simply chose whom to marry, take a bunch of money and their victim has no power over the decision. It is terrible but it has not much to do with the sexuality of a minority.
So in short i would say occams razor tells us that it is rather unlikely that these policies are pushed by pedophiles, even if some or even many of them might agree with the goal.
I can not really talk about Republican Senators (as i am not an US citizen) but the reason why child abuse is rampant in the catholic church is because the instituational structures foster abuse. Abusers, in turn, tend to go for the easiest victims. Children sadly are not only easy victims, they are also in the care of those priests, leading to many cases of child abuse. I know it is not an easy pill to swallow, but most of these priests are simply put, predators that had children available to them. If they had to care for vulnerable adults, they might have had preferred those. If you are interested i can link you a study about how many perpetrators of child abuse are in fact not pedophiles.
I know it is easy to see children getting the short end of the stick and to cry out “DAMN PEDOPHILIA” but it is really not helpful. There need not be any pedophiles for children to get abused, sexually or not. Let us keep that in mind while we all fight for more and better childrens rights.
Edit: grammar