According to a report by the Statistical Center of Iran 25,900 child girls have married from last winter until now. Based on this report, over 1,300 infants have been born to mothers under the age of 15, which is higher than the previous year’s statistics.
Hammihan Newspaper, citing the report of the Statistical Center on October 19, reported that over 200 girls under the age of 15 have registered for divorce in the past winter.
Previously, the state-run Etemad newspaper reported in May that at least 27,000 children under the age of 15 had married in one year, citing data from the Statistical Center of Iran. According to the data, 27,448 cases of girls under the age of 15 getting married were registered in various parts of Iran from winter 2021 to autumn 2022.
According to these statistics, an average of 135,000 marriages of girls under 18 are registered annually in Iran, with about 1,700 of those marriages involving girls under 13.
Internationally, marriage under the age of 18 is considered child marriage, but according to the laws of the Iranian regime, marriage of girls under 13 only requires “parental consent” and “court approval based on the best interests of the child.”
The promotion of marriage and childbearing by the government has always been a subject of controversy among children’s rights activists in recent years.
In this regard, Simin Kazemi, a physician and sociologist, mentioned the high statistics of child marriages in an interview with Khabar Online website on April 15, stating that “the decision to marry children is not considered an important issue at the macro level and is defended in line with the population increase policy.” She was referring to the “Family and Youth Support Act.”
In November 2021, the regime’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, communicated this law, which was passed by the regime’s parliament, to the Ministry of Health for implementation.
The purpose of this law is to increase marriage, childbearing, and the growth of the Iranian population, stemming from the directives of Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Iranian regime.
Simin Kazemi warned Khabar Online, stating, “Some officials, without considering social changes and disregarding research results, based on their own experiences or, for example, their relatives who got married as children and claim to have had no problems, deny the dangers and consequences of child marriage.”
Kazemi cautioned that “this unscientific and mistaken view about an important social issue has put the future and the physical, mental, and social well-being of girls at risk.”
Amnesty International has previously accused the Islamic Republic of violating children’s rights in Iran, considering child marriage a violation of human rights, and has called for the guarantee of children’s rights by increasing the minimum age of marriage to 18.
One of the other violations of women’s rights in Iran is forced marriage. The existing laws in Iran place it among the countries with the lowest minimum age for girls’ marriage. These marriages primarily occur through the coercion of families.
Forced marriage is an oppressive tradition that came to light after the 1979 revolution in Iran and is justified under the name of religion, cultural beliefs, economic and political problems. This inhuman phenomenon, whose primarily victims are girls, is carried out in Iran with the complete backing of the clerical regime’s leaders due to their misogynist laws.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery has announced forced marriages a type of slavery.
In the legislative reform initiative published in 2007, UNICEF writes, “Most of all, the human rights perspective helps to frame child marriage as a crime against women and the girl child”. And adds, “Child marriage violates a panoply of interconnected rights, including, the right to equality on grounds of sex and age, the right to marry and found a family, the right to life, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the right to education and development and the right to be free from slavery.”
