Weddings skyrocket after country passes law allowing children as young as nine to marry

The legal age of marriage in Iraq has effectively been lowered to 9 (Image: Getty)

The lowering of the age at which a child can be married in Iraq has led to an increase in the number of weddings in the country last year. Iraq’s parliament passed a law in January 2025 which effectively allowed girls to be married off to men from the age of nine.

The country approved changes to its personal status law permitting citizens to have marriage matters handled by sect-based religious courts. The move followed years of pressure from Shia political parties to move away from the country’s civil legal framework, which since the 1950s has provided safeguards against child marriage. The introduction of Ja’fari law, an 8th-century religious jurisprudence specifically for Shias means that girls below the minimum age of 15 for marriage can now be married with a judge’s consent.

The move has seen protests across Iraq (Image: Getty)

The law, allows judges to permit child marriage based on perceived "maturity and physical capacity", meaning that girls as young as nine can effectively be married to men, providing they have started puberty.

Speaking at the time of the amendment, Intisar al-Mayali, a human rights activist and a member of the Iraqi Women’s League, warned of the law's "disastrous" consequences for Iraqi women and girls.

She said: "[It] will leave disastrous effects on the rights of women and girls, through the marriage of girls at an early age, which violates their right to life as children, and will disrupt the protection mechanisms for divorce, custody and inheritance for women."

A 2023 United Nations report found that 28% of girls in Iraq are married before turning 18, with a further 22 % of unregistered marriages involving girls younger than 14.

While Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council does not publish marriage data by age, it recorded 14,000 more weddings following the amendment in the first half of 2025 than in the same period the year before.

Videos depicting child marriages in Iraq have spread widely on TikTok, drawing both attention and controversy.

Some beauty influencers, including make-up artist Baraa Macer, who has roughly 264,000 followers, regularly post footage of very young brides ahead of their wedding ceremonies.

In accompanying captions, Macer has said that some of the girls are younger than 10, shown dressed in traditional white wedding garments as they prepare for religious rites.

One clip, which is believed to show a girl born in 2013 and married last year at the age of 11, amassed around 250,000 views and more than 1,000 comments.

Responses ranged from condemnation to posts from young women saying they themselves had been married at a similar age.